


A Following Sea

by divakat



Category: NCIS
Genre: Anal Sex, Case Fic, First Time, Hand Jobs, Hawaii, M/M, Post-Hiatus, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Slash, Surfer!Gibbs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 08:04:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6896881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divakat/pseuds/divakat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Hiatus and just following Gibbs' return to NCIS, Tony and Gibbs are sent out on assignment to do threat assessment at NCIS Pearl Harbor prior an international naval exercise. The two must deal with a terrorist threat as well as the scars of Hiatus and the re-emergence of memory. Secrets are revealed, confessions made, and a future decided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the NCIS 2016 Reverse Bang Challenge. Artwork by Evian_Fork  
> Thank you to Cackymn for the Beta!

 

_A Following Sea_

Tony glanced up from his pile of expense reports, eyes quickly taking in the non-activity around the bullpen. Bustle and commotion had become his refuge recently, boredom his nemesis, and today his fingers were itchy and his mind a defiant, bouncing ball which refused to stay still and focus.

Three weeks. Three weeks since Gibbs had reassumed his command of the MCRT and everything was already business as usual.

At least on the surface.

He’d be lying if he didn’t admit, at least to himself, that he missed it just a little. That he missed being in the know, storming into Jenny’s office rather than feeling like he was sneaking around behind Gibbs’ back.

Jenny. He didn’t know when the change from “Director” to “Shepard” to “Jenny” had happened, but he was going to have to watch it around Gibbs from now on. Then again, was that a hint of jealousy he’d seen?

In truth, he mostly missed being the one the team looked to for direction. The mantle of leadership had weighed heavily on his shoulders, more heavily than he would ever confess to Gibbs or even Shepherd. Still, he felt the absence of that weight acutely some days and the loss was more unpleasant than he’d anticipated.

Even after a few months of Gibbs’ absence, a few months of fading hope, of taking on a job he’d never dreamed of wanting and hoping to hell no one figured out that he was merely a pretender to the throne, Tony had still felt like a damn place holder. Part of him-the part that knew Gibbs more deeply than he’d ever let on-was always anticipating that one day he’d step off of the elevator to find all of his things back at his old desk.  Each day he didn’t a part of him shrank and diminished even as something else bloomed and flourished. And then three weeks ago it had actually happened, his greatest hope and most fitful dream had coalesced into the reality of a tan, scruffy, and somehow both more and less haunted Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and he’d suddenly realized he hadn’t been prepared at all despite his gut’s insistence on inevitability.

Of course there were other complications, things which were definitely off the discussion menu since the man who was quietly becoming more recognizable as Gibbs each day had returned to prowl the orange NCIS halls.

Bits and pieces of sensation and memory slammed against Tony’s well-reinforced walls and he fought hard not to show a reaction.

 _Warm hand in the small of his bare back beneath the afternoon sun-calloused palms caressing his shoulders-tickling breath against his ear, closer than it should be, quicker than it should be-touch of curious fingers sliding over his ribs, his belly, down his thighs, so fucking_ close- _hardness of a man’s body pressed to his, so foreign yet so completely irresistible-the look in Jethro’s eyes after he touched him, hungry yet cautious and uncertain._

And then the delightful promise of something unthinkably forbidden, something warm and strangely right, had been blown to complete shit by some asshole named after a rice paddy dyke and Gibbs had bailed on him and the rest of the team just like everyone else in Tony’s life ever had.

He didn’t want to blame him but neither did he know how to stop blaming him. Not without some kind of explanation. Not without some sort of…apology. One that he was quite certain was not forthcoming. Sure, he knew the explosion had jumbled Gibbs’ reality, had tilted his world sideways, and maybe it hadn’t come fully upright again yet, but Tony’s head was just as much of a mess and he didn’t have a bomb to blame, at least not directly.

“Heads up.”

Tony barely had time to react as Gibbs lobbed an object straight for him. It was only the combination of quick reflexes and instinct that allowed him to snatch it out of the air just prior to impact. He looked down to find a bottle of sunscreen clasped in his hands. His eyes lit up hopefully.

“Gonna need to pack a bag. We head out for Pearl at 1600.” Gibbs had immediately busied himself behind his desk, shifting paperwork and appearing not to notice Tony’s near whoop of joy.

“You serious, Boss? Because it’s really not nice to joke about…” Tony started before he was abruptly cut off.

“Got increased chatter out of Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a few dozen other places about the Russian presence at RIMPAC, and North Korea’s waving nuclear warheads around like Fourth of July fireworks. Got a few people more nervous than usual. Sec Nav and DOD are increasing the number of agents doing threat assessment ahead of the exercises and our _Director_ volunteered our services.” Despite the slightly derisive tone, Gibbs didn’t sound nearly as put-out as Tony might have expected under the circumstances.

“Hawaii?” Tony asked again incredulously. “Did you hear that, McGee? We’re really going to Hawaii?” he turned to Tim whose face had also lit up like a Christmas tree. “Ziva, please tell me you own a string bikini.”

“Not McGee. And not you either, Ziva.” Gibbs reached into a bottom drawer in his desk and slipped something into a pocket in his go-bag. “Just you and me, DiNozzo.”

Tony felt his stomach give a momentary lurch. He wasn’t unsympathetic to what his teammates must be feeling at the thought of being left behind, especially in light of recent events. The instinct to shield these people he still felt inexplicably possessive of was strong, though he dared not exercise it. Stronger still was his trepidation over the awkwardness of a trip alone with Gibbs, uncertainty brought on by the knowledge that the rock he’d always been sure was whole and solid was instead pitted and fractured in places he couldn’t have anticipated.

“Sorry Probie, better luck next time. I’ll bring you back a pineapple. Ziva, I’ll bring _you_ a coconut bra.” Tony tucked his passport and credentials away, checking through the stack of papers on his desk to make sure he hadn’t missed anything while he watched Gibbs from beneath long lashes.

“Need you here to work with the B team, McGee. Need someone I can trust to keep me informed so they don’t have a chance to screw anything up while we’re gone. You’re my eyes and ears back here. You think you can handle that?” Gibbs looked at Tim pointedly and accepted his solemn-if still slightly disappointed- nod. “Ziva, Sec Nav doesn’t think it’s the best idea to drag Mossad into the middle of the biggest international Naval exercise in the world, and I can’t say I disagree this time. What I do need is for you to use every contact and backchannel you have to keep us ahead of anything we need to know.”

“I understand, Gibbs.” She was unable to completely conceal the tightness from her voice but did not mount an argument. Tony knew her well enough to see the deeper disappointment in her eyes.

Tony watched the scene play out between the three of them and couldn’t help the tiny bit of admiration he felt for the other man. Gibbs might be a bastard, but Abby was right, he knew how to give people what they needed. Or at least he tried.

“You got any problems with this assignment, DiNozzo?” Gibbs stopped what he was doing to study him for a moment.

 “Hey, I’ll take any excuse you give me for a few days in the sand and sun. Never been to Hawaii.” Tony shouldered his pack and plastered on his most convincing smile, ignoring the feeling in the pit of his stomach that said there was more going on here than Gibbs was making plain on the surface. “Wonder if there’s a Magnum tour,” he mused to himself.

“Not a vacation, Dinozzo. We’re there to work,” Gibbs warned, though the chastisement contained less bark than usual.

“Yeah, but we can’t work 24/7, Boss. Gotta be able to sneak in a few hours on Waikiki beach,” Tony grinned hopefully.

Gibbs didn’t respond, seeming intent on closing down his computer and packing up a few files.

Tony wandered the few feet to Tim’s desk. “We’ll be back before you know it, Probie. Probably won’t even have a chance to miss us. Besides, it’s Gibbs. I’ll be lucky if I see anything more of the beach than the view from the plane,” he said softly. He squeezed Tim’s shoulder, earning him an odd look. “Make sure you keep Abby in fresh Caf-Pow, stay away from internet porn at work, don’t feed Palmer after midnight, and _don’t_ answer my phone.” This was louder, more in keeping with what he knew was expected of him.

“DiNozzo!” Gibbs barked from the elevator.

“On my way.” He locked eyes with Ziva on his way out and didn’t miss the look of near-sympathy. As the elevator doors slid closed with an ominous hiss and sealed them in silence, Tony seriously wished someone in the building had thought to pipe in bad music. He glanced at the little switch that would suspend them in mid-descent, waiting to see if Gibbs had something more to hit him with. He had his own questions burning a hole in his gut.

“You gonna tell me why we’re really leaving them behind, Gibbs?” Tony ventured. They reached their destination and the doors slid open. At first he thought Gibbs simply wasn’t going to respond.

“My reasons not good enough for you any more, Tony?” It wasn’t confrontational, but curiosity and something else tinged his voice.

“They are.” Tony said flatly. “As long as they’re the right ones. Been left behind for the wrong ones enough lately.” It wasn’t the first time he’d been bold enough to take on Gibbs in the last few weeks when they were on their own but he’d yet to receive any satisfaction from it.

Gibbs turned at this, stepped in close to Tony’s space. “Think I should leave you behind too, DiNozzo?” Blue eyes were flat and searching.

Tony didn’t flinch. “Guess that’s up to you. I’m starting to get used to it.”

They stood there together in silence, Gibbs’ foot holding the door of the elevator while neither one of them gave an inch. To Tony’s surprise it was Gibbs who backed off. The older man simply turned for the parking garage looking no smaller for the slight victory he had just given away.

“Andrews. 1600. If you’re a minute late we’re wheels up without you and you can swim to Hawaii,” Jethro barked, disappearing around the corner.

Tony let out the breath he’d been holding in a prolonged sigh and dropped his bag from his shoulder, leaning against the wall of the elevator. “This is gonna be a long fucking trip.”

Gibbs knew he was being watched. He’d allowed the hum and shake of the transport they’d hopped from Andrews to lull him into a sort of trance-like state which wasn’t sleep but wasn’t full consciousness either. It was the closest he’d come to true relaxation since being back in DC.

The problem with relaxing lately was that the moment he let his mind slip for half a second he was forcibly assaulted by memories that had no right or permission to intrude on his awareness.

The first time they’d come to him he’d been sanding away at the deck of Frank’s hacienda, getting it ready to paint. The wood had been rough and worn and in a moment of inattention, he’d lodged a splinter deep in his palm. A heartbeat later he’d been back in his basement walking with ghosts.

_“It’s just a splinter, DiNozzo. Let me see.”_

_“Feels like there’s half a tree in my palm. I don’t think your boat likes me very much.” Tony held out his hand reluctantly, eyes squeezed shut._

_He took the younger man’s hand, cradling it in his own. The splinter was large but it wasn’t deep. With a smile, he grabbed a clean rag from the workbench, gripped the protruding fragment of offending wood, and pulled against the angle of entry while holding Tony’s wrist._

_“OWW!”_

_In one smooth movement he let the splinter fall to the ground while he pressed the cloth to the drop of blood which formed in the spot where it had resided._

_“Is it out?” Tony opened his eyes and stepped in closer._

_He could feel the heat of the other man across the space between them. Jethro nodded. “All better.” It came out more softly than he’d intended, the words sticky and heavy in his throat. He removed the cloth but the small wound seemed to have stopped bleeding already. Without a thought he bent and pressed his lips quickly to the spot of soft skin before releasing Tony’s hand._

_“Did you just kiss my boo-boo and make it better, Gibbs?” A grin lit Tony’s face from ear to ear._

_He spun around quickly and slapped the rag onto the bench behind him, grabbing the first tool within reach and cleaning it furiously. “Yeah, well, whine like a little girl and I’ll treat you like one, DiNozzo.” He could feel the heat in his cheeks. Tony didn’t respond but he could sense the other man still standing right behind him._

_When Tony did speak, his voice was pitched low and the sound of it danced up his spine. “Are you sure you got it all out? Maybe you should check again.”_

_When he didn’t immediately turn around he found Tony’s hand held out in front of his chest._

_“Please, Gibbs.”_

_Clenching his hands around the drill bit in his grasp and then slowly releasing, he brought his fingers up to lightly circle the younger man’s wrist and finally risked turning around. Tony’s eyes were heavy and dark as he gently slid his fingers across his palm, pressing lightly at the slightly reddened spot where the splinter had lodged itself. “This hurt?”_

_“Little,” Tony murmured. His breathing was quick and shallow now._

_It was clear there was nothing left in the fast- closing wound. Tony shuddered at a last sweep of his fingertips and Jethro bent his head slowly and pressed his mouth to the little spot of flesh once more. His lips lingered there this time, and he parted them slightly, letting his tongue flick out to gather the soft, metallic taste of Tony’s skin. “Better?” he whispered, breath kissing the younger man’s palm._

_“Jethro.”_

_Long, tentative fingers were suddenly wrapping around the back of his neck, slipping in his hair…_

Gibbs had come out of the memory with his hands pressed flat to the deck, his dick hard, and his breathing shallow, splinter completely forgotten, head spinning at the implications of it. From that moment forward he’d spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about just what he’d really left behind in DC without realizing it.

He felt Tony’s eyes on him some days, distant and pensive. He saw the younger man flinch when he got too close, as if stung by his mere presence. The worst part of it was knowing the scenes playing behind Tony’s eyes, the one’s which mirrored his own choppy memories. One thing he knew for certain was that no explanation or apology was going to be enough to make things right with Tony and he had no idea where to even start. More than a month since he’d been back in DC, three weeks since he’d been back at NCIS full time, and he’d been no closer to an opening, not until yesterday.

He’d almost laughed out loud when Jenny had mentioned the assignment at Pearl. She’d been looking for his recommendation on who to send alongside DiNozzo and Jethro hadn’t missed the shocked and curious expression on her face when he’d put his own name forward. He wasn’t a big believer in fate but sometimes it almost seemed fate believed in him.

Jethro wasn’t a fool. He’d been all too aware of Tony’s well-concealed tension the moment he’d announced this assignment and had only felt it deepen when it became clear it was just going to be the two of them. Gibbs wasn’t crazy enough to believe they were going to get through this without a blow up and, while he was skilled in denial, he wouldn’t lie to himself about the fact that he was almost relieved that their present circumstances were pushing them into the right arena for the confrontation.

Something about the tension in the hold of the plane suddenly changed and Jethro heard Tony let out a long and seemingly resigned sigh, the only sound he’d heard from the opposite bench since the first hour of their flight. Nine hours of silence might be a record for him.

“Something on your mind, DiNozzo?” He kept his eyes closed, his hands crossed lightly low on his belly.

“Just wondering how much longer before we land. Can’t feel my ass anymore. We couldn’t go commercial? Even for Hawaii?” The moment of hesitation before the answer spoke volumes though, and it was clear Tony was covering for his real thoughts.

“Get there when we get there.” Gibbs opened his eyes slowly, focused on the man directly across from him. Tony was watching him almost warily, fingers twisting and worrying a section of cargo net. “We’ve been over the Pacific awhile now. Maybe another hour,” he added almost gently. He knew what he needed to do and he was going to have to open the door eventually or it might kill them both. 40,000 ft above sea level seemed as safe a place as any.

Tony’s hand stilled at Gibbs’ tone and dropped into his lap, but his shoulders stayed high, on guard. They sat quietly for a few moments, each one watching the other. “So you brought me all the way out here, Gibbs. We ever gonna talk about you leaving? Talk about why? We ever gonna talk about why you bothered to come back?” The words came out in a rush and Tony blinked at him, seemingly surprised that they had passed his lips.

And there is was. He’d left the damn door open and Tony had busted it in anyway. Gibbs had an answer for all of it but he wasn’t sure he was ready to give it yet, at least not completely. And yet Tony deserved something. “Left because I thought I had to. Because I couldn’t remember why I’d started in the first place. Couldn’t remember anything good about it anymore.” The last part was quieter, as quiet as it could be over the roar of the jet’s engines.

Tony was silent for one of the first times Jethro could remember, studying him with thoughtful eyes. Perhaps he was just so stunned at getting any kind of an answer at all that he didn’t know how to respond.

Jethro continued. “Came back because I had things to finish, Tony. Things I’d forgotten about. Important things. Things I need to make right.” He held Tony’s eyes and hoped he felt the weight behind the words. “What about you? We gonna talk about Spain? Talk about why you stayed?” There were more than his own issues hanging between them.

Tony’s eyes widened slightly for a split second, the only tell he gave that he’d been caught off guard on this. “Should have known she’d tell you about that.”

“She didn’t have to. And that wasn’t an answer.”

Green eyes fixed to his. “I stayed because this is my team. And my team needed me. I stayed because I wasn’t sure exactly how much of you came back from that explosion, Jethro.” The accusation was searing. He was quiet for a moment and finally dropped his gaze. “Maybe some things are better left forgotten.” This last part almost seemed to be for himself, spoken to the cold steel of the hold floor.

Gibbs unfolded himself slowly, stood, and crossed the two steps to the opposite bench. Grabbing a fistful of cargo netting to steady himself against the turbulence of the plane, he reached down and circled his fingers around Tony’s wrist, drawing it toward him. The look on the younger man’s face as his head come up said he was too stunned to protest. Gibbs gently swept his thumb back and forth over the spot in the center of Tony’s palm that had become the catalyst to so many sleepless nights. No mark remained to remind him of the incident but something deep inside softened and ached at the memory. “Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t,” he said slowly, managing to keep his voice level.

Tony yanked his hand away as if the touch burned and rubbed his own thumb deep into his palm, eyes wide. He didn’t seem to be able to find his breath.

Someone cleared their voice behind him and Gibbs turned to find one of the crew watching them from the entrance to the cockpit. “Excuse me, sirs, but we’re beginning our descent into Hickham in just a minute. You might want to strap in. The air over the island gets pretty choppy.” He nodded to both of them without waiting for an acknowledgement and returned to his seat.

The rest of the answers would have to wait, but Jethro knew from the pounding of Tony’s pulse he’d felt beneath his fingers a moment before and his own body’s not-so-subtle reaction to their brief physical contact that they weren’t going to wait for long.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Tony had always felt there was something disorienting about air travel, especially the military kind. You sat inside a cold, pressurized tube for hours, and landed a continent or two away with no real sense of the thousands of miles of earth which passed below you during the flight. Sure, there was a vast difference between DC and the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq, but even there he could almost imagine that he was just somewhere in the dismal abyss of Nevada. If Nevada was surrounded by razor wire, mine fields, and smelled of falafel, that is.

Hawaii was different. The moment he stepped from the plane onto the tarmac the scent of sweet blooming flowers and the distant salty tang of ocean water reached his nose even above the stink of asphalt and jet fuel. The air was thick and humid but not at all unpleasantly warm. Beyond the towering hotels of Honolulu in the distance, impossibly green and rugged mountains, so vastly different from the rocky, pine-covered slopes of the Shenandoah, rose up to kiss a blue sky not dissimilar in depth and hue from the eyes which had been trained unrelentingly on him for the last hour of their flight.

_He remembers._ The words pounded in his head over and over and Tony dug his thumb into his palm again, trying to work away the tantalizing tingle he still felt from the trail of Jethro’s fingertips over his skin.

_He remembers. Jesus, fuck, Gibbs remembers_. _But how much?_ Tony’s head was spinning as he realized that perhaps the impetus to this trip hadn’t been what he thought it was at all.

Fortunately, Tony was forced to set aside his disturbing line of thought and fit the mask back in place as a tall man in a linen shirt and khakis with an NCIS badge at his hip approached them from a sedan that was parked on the tarmac.

“Special Agent Gibbs?” the new arrival inquired, speaking over the hum of utility vehicles which had begun unloading the plane’s cargo.

Gibbs nodded, shouldering his duffel enough to extend his hand.

“I’m Special Agent Cabbot, but Jason’s fine. We’re pretty informal out here. Welcome to Fantasy Island.” His easy grin took in both of them, fading only slightly at Gibbs’ obviously unamused stoic response.

“Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.” They shook hands in greeting. ”So you’re the Herve Villachez of NCIS, Pearl, huh?” Tony said as Cabbot led them toward the sedan.

“You could say that,” Cabbot chuckled. “Except I’m taller and better looking.”

“I don’t know,” Tony quipped, “I always thought Tattoo was the real star of the show. You know he was the one fulfilling all those fantasies when Roarke wasn’t looking.” For some reason he’d taken an instant liking to their host, and his easy, relaxed manner made him comfortable despite the thoughts of Gibbs still roaming the back of his brain.

“You two finished?” Gibbs slid into the passenger side and nailed both of them with a steely blue glare.

Cabbot laughed again. “This your first trip to the islands?”

“Yeah,” Tony answered quickly.

“What about you Gibbs?” he prompted when Gibbs didn’t respond.

“Spent some time here. Before I joined NIS.” His voice was slightly distant and he stared straight ahead as Cabbot merged onto a freeway on-ramp.

Tony studied the side of the older man’s face but found no clues there. Obviously it was feasible that in the many years before Tony had known him, Gibbs had travelled through here, even during his years in the Corps, but something in his voice said this was more personal. _Another mystery to solve._

“We’ve got base housing set up for you both for however long you’re here. Nothing fancy, but I’m sure you’re used to that. With all the extra personnel, accommodations are a little scarce.” Tony forced himself to focus on Cabbot and not Gibbs.

“We’ll be staying off base. Got a friend with a place up on the North Shore. ‘Bout a half hour out of Pearl.” Gibbs kept his attention focused out the window.

Tony started in genuine surprise, mouth parting slightly and then closing again as his brow furrowed in contemplation. 

“Can’t blame you there. Sure we can dig up a vehicle for you,” Cabbot said. “Figured we’d give you a day to settle in before we threw you into the mix.”

“We’re good to go. Just need an hour or two. Appreciate a Sit Rep thought.”

Tony really wanted to argue this point. It was already early evening and with a six hour time difference that made it some time in the middle of the night back in DC. He’d take a day to settle in if they were willing to give it to him. And another day to figure out just what in the hell he was settling into with Gibbs.

“’Friad we’re a little behind in organization,” Cabbot confessed. “We’ve got Agents on loan from Homeland, six NCIS field offices, and Army Intelligence out of Schofield all trying to prove who’s got the biggest Johnson. And if that wasn’t enough of a pain in the ass we’ve got spooks throwing in sketchy foreign intelligence info through even sketchier backchannels. NCIS has jurisdiction but we’re just trying to keep everyone from crossing swords right now, if you know what I mean.”

“Any credible threats?” Tony piped up before Gibbs this time.

“A few. Cyber and the rest of my FCI team are still putting together scattered intelligence, but give me 18 hours and I’ll have something for the two of you to start running with on your own. Right now we’re just pulling at strings and seeing what holds together and what unravels. We’ve chased down more than our fair share of dead ends so far.”

“I’ll give you your 18 hours but we’ll take some of those dead ends of yours in the meantime. Might be able to revive a few of them. We’ve got our own backchannels.” Gibbs resumed his watch out the window.

Tony had felt a brief surge of hope and then suppressed an inner groan. A few hours of beach time was one thing, stuck alone with Gibbs in some hut somewhere bogged down in cold leads was his idea of slow torture.

“So how long have you been with NCIS, Agent DiNozzo? Agent Gibbs’ reputation kind of precedes him.” Cabbot grinned at Tony in the reflection of the rearview mirror.

“Five and a half years, I guess. Was a detective in a few places before Gibbs here picked me up off the street.” He realized the way it sounded but didn’t correct himself. “How about you? Don’t take offense but you seem young to be leading your own team.”

“Ha! I’ll take that as a compliment, DiNozzo. Did a four year haul with the Navy right out of high school. Got into the MA program. When I got out I tried local law enforcement but I missed intelligence work. NCIS seemed like the best compromise. Was at the Central Field office for awhile, but when they downsized I got assigned Agent Afloat for six months on the _Abe_ and we passed through Pearl a few times. Put in for the gig here and I’m going on six years now. Had my own team for a little over three years.” Cabbot made the information very matter-of-fact and Tony didn’t sense any kind of boasting.

Cabbot had had prior experience in the Navy, but still, Tony thought they were probably pretty close in age. The fact that he’d been leading his own team for three years did make him give a little thought to Spain and the possibility he’d set himself back by choosing as he had. Then again, there _were_ extenuating circumstances, and FCI Pearl was definitely not the DC MCRT. How did you quit the starting line-up in the show for a coaching job in the minors?

A few minutes later and they were pulling off the freeway and through the checkpoint at the naval base. So far Pearl Harbor looked pretty much like any of a dozen city-adjacent bases he’d been on and, aside from the distant scenery, it was hard to believe he was on a tiny island in the Pacific. Cabbot had given them a running tour of everything significant they’d passed and, while he’d indulged Tony’s endless string of questions about the best beaches and nightlife, they had yet to even catch a glimpse of the ocean. 

“This is us. Not much compared to DC but we make it work.” Cabbot pulled up in front of a two story white building that looked similar to several other structures they’d passed on their way in. “We’ve got passes ready for you, maps of the island and Pearl as well as MCBH. You can meet the rest of my team and I’ll make a quick call about transport.”

Tony could feel the difference in the atmosphere between this field office and DC immediately. DC had a constant buzz, a sense of propriety, of authority, of mission. NCIS Pearl, despite the current level of readiness and focus, still felt more relaxed, less stuffy. He liked it.

“This is the rest of my team.” Cabbot led them into an open, airy space with a lot of natural light and walls the color of the ocean. Two agents, identified by the badges at their waists, rose from behind their desks. The first was a woman so stunningly beautiful Tony couldn’t believe she hadn’t stepped out from the pages of a magazine. The other was a younger, balding man of middling height who made McGee look like he belonged on a GQ cover. “This is Special Agent Amber Spencer and Special Agent Ted Borling. These are Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo from the DC field office.”

Hands were shaken and clipped pleasantries exchanged.

“Agent Spencer, aren’t you a little too beautiful to be a federal agent?” Tony flirted shamelessly on instinct. The woman before him obviously had native Hawaiian blood and her long dark hair flowed loosely over her shoulders and framed a face that must have turned a thousand heads.

“Excuse me?” Her mouth tightened and she raised an eyebrow at him sharply.

Tony fumbled, not used to being met with such icy calm in the face of his charms. Well, at least not often. “I, uh…what I mean is, you could model or, you know, be a trophy wife or something.” He tried to gather himself. “Not that…I’m sure you’re a great agent.” Tony took a deep breath and let the train wreck just happen. “You’re just pretty.” He smiled gawkily thought the pain of it. He didn’t dare look over at Gibbs right now and he was surprised he hadn’t felt a palm striking the back of his head.

“That’s what my girlfriend tells me every day, Agent DiNozzo,” Spencer said calmly, quirking a small smile. “I try not to let my looks get in the way when I’m shooting at people.”

“You’re... with a woman. That’s…” Tony made an odd and somewhat awkward gesture with his fingers and cleared his throat loudly. “Good for you.” He gave an uncomfortable thumbs-up and could feel the heat in his face as he turned back to Cabbot and Gibbs who were already going over some files at another desk.

“These are just the leads that have run out on us. We’re still sorting through at least a dozen more. Borling’s convinced we’re just missing a piece of the puzzle on this one in particular, Assam Fayed. Chatter says his branch of Al Kaida is calling for martyrs to target “A great gathering of whales”, which we think is code for PACRIM, but we can’t find a definitive target or plan.” He held out a folder to Gibbs. “We’re watching everything that comes through right now to see if we get a connection but Fayed’s gone off the radar for the last four months.”

Gibbs took the folder and nodded. “I’ll make some calls.” He scribbled a few notes on a piece of paper and handed it to Cabbot. “This is where we’ll be and these are our cells. You get anything that fits together before tomorrow you let me know.”

The ringing of a phone on Cabbot’s desk interrupted anything further.

“They’re bringing a vehicle around for you. You’ll just need to sign it out,” he said after a exchanging a few perfunctory words into the receiver.  “I’m sure you’re familiar with the paperwork.” Cabbot grinned widely.

“See ya at 1300 tomorrow unless we hear from you before then.” Gibbs nodded and headed for the double doors they’d entered only a few minutes ago, small stack of files in hand.

“Enjoy the North Shore.” Cabbot and his team were already settling back in to work as they departed.

Tony followed on Gibbs’ heels. “Kinda like the paint job in here, Boss. Little more soothing than all the orange,” he said hopefully.

“Well, you’ll have at least a week to enjoy it, DiNozzo. Try not to get too attached.”

* * *

 

By the time they left the base the sun was setting. Tony craned his neck in every direction but all he saw were buildings, the winding stretch of crowded freeway before them, and distant mountains. Not that the mountains weren’t pretty, but they certainly weren’t the ocean.

“You seem to know where you’re going,” Tony said as the freeway ended and became a two lane highway bordered by the lights of houses on one side and blackness on the other.

 “Yeah.”

“So…you’ve been here before.”

“Yeah.”

Tony waited patiently.

“Friend from the corps I met at Pendleton is a native. Came down here for a while once.” There was a finality to the statement this time.

“And as usual you’re not going to tell me any more than that.” Tony sighed. 

At this Gibbs remained silent.

Tony let it pass. There had never been a point to pressing Gibbs on something he didn’t want to talk about in the past and he didn’t think much had likely changed. The silence left him alone with the heaviness of his thoughts and the stone-weight of his gut that wondered just how long it would be before Gibbs let him in on where in the hell his head was at.

Gibbs had given him something in that plane earlier, had perhaps even laid a tiny piece of himself at Tony’s feet, and he’d be damned if he knew what in the hell to do about it. Four months ago he would have scooped the other man up in his arms, NCIS and consequences be damned. A month ago he’d have punched him. But now…he didn’t want to think about now, couldn’t think about it. It made his chest and his head hurt in equal measure.

With practiced care he tied up the bundle of frenzied thought that was Leroy Jethro Gibbs and shoved it to the specially carved out spot in the back of his head where he could almost, _almost,_ pretend it didn’t exist for a few hours at a time.

Eventually both sides of the road grew dark and Tony continued to stare out the window at the inky blackness and the vague outlines of rugged hills and palm trees. The road began to wind more and now the sedan’s headlights caught the sides of steep cliffs which sometimes bordered the side of the road as well as homes set back just out of sight behind tall fences. He sensed that they had changed direction but was disoriented in the darkness. “We almost there? Can’t be much more to this island.” The silence had finally made him uncomfortable.

As if in answer, they passed a brightly lit area with a supermarket and several other stores. “Another mile or so. It’s changed a bit since I was last here. Used to be a little less crowded.”

Indeed, cars lined the sides of the road even though it was dark, and there were several people out walking, biking, or carrying surfboards. Surfboards meant the beach and Tony perked up immediately. “So, how close are we to the ocean then?” Of course he’d grown up on the Atlantic coast but somehow this was different.

“’Bout thirty feet.” Gibbs looked at him quizzically. “Been right outside for the last ten minutes.” He gestured out his window.

Tony was suddenly almost in Gibbs’ lap, straining to see anything in the darkness.

“You mind, DiNozzo? I’d like to see where I’m going,” Gibbs growled lightly and pushed him back.

“Sorry.” He still craned and squinted at the non-descript blackness he assumed to be the Pacific Ocean but could make out nothing to fix his eyes to. He didn’t have long to be disappointed as Gibbs suddenly swung into a nearly invisible hole in a high fence immediately beside the road. 

The home in front of them was two stories with a flat roof and wide awnings. It’s light green color and slightly darker shutters somehow gave it a tropical feel. Tall palms lined one side of the drive and separated it from a smaller building toward the rear of the property which had the look of a guest house. Overall it seemed well cared for but had a casual, open feel with its wide windows and glass entryways. Warm, welcoming light shone from inside.

Gibbs pulled up next to a large Jeep and put the car into park but stayed where he was. The tension Tony had been feeling for the better part of the drive was evident in the set of his shoulders and jaw even in the shadows.

“Gibbs…” Tony ventured. Something was playing out right now that he didn’t fully understand but he sensed that this wasn’t something related to their conversation earlier.

“Been a long time since I was here, Tony. And the last time…” Jethro began. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel and his voice caught just a little before he stopped himself. “Just need a minute.”

It was more reveal than Tony was used to and he simply nodded. A moment later, however, a bright porchlight illuminated the inside of the car, making him squint. The door to the house opened and the outline of a tall man appeared.

As soon as they exited the car, a booming voice greeted them exuberantly. “Aloha, welcome to the North Shore.” The dark haired stranger stepped close to Gibbs and the two embraced as warmly as Tony had ever seen Jethro embrace another man. The breeze carried whispered words to Tony’ ears. ”Welcome back, _kaikua’ana_. It’s been too long.”

Tony stood awkwardly as what was clearly a significant moment unfolded between the two men. He didn’t recognize the softly lilting language but the unfamiliar words were spoken with deep affection. Eventually they released each other and turned to him.

“Holokai Kama, this is Anthony DiNozzo.” Gibbs introduced him only somewhat awkwardly as their host came around the car to greet him.

“Tony.” He put on his warmest smile and extended his hand, but was immediately engulfed in strong arms and patted soundly on the back. 

“If you had any influence at all in getting Gibbs to come back to his island home after all this time you should call me Kai.” Even in shadow his face was a broad grin.

“Think I’m just along for the ride, Kai.” Tony grinned up at him. Kai easily stood two inches above him, maybe even three, and had much broader shoulders than either he or Gibbs. He was wearing tan board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt printed in muted greens and blues which was loose fitting and concealed, what Tony assumed to be, a well-muscled frame.

“Thanks for agreeing to put us up. Sorry for the short notice.” Gibbs hefted his duffle onto his shoulder from the other side of the car.

“My door was always open to you, Gibbs. You know that,” Kai said, a hint of regret and maybe even sadness coloring his voice. “I can see by your eyes that it’s been too long.”

Tony didn’t miss the subtle shake of Jethro’s head as though he was warning Kai off from saying too much.

“I’ve got you set up in the guest house out back. There’s more than enough room for you in the main house if you’d prefer that but I thought you might want more privacy?” He quirked an eyebrow at Gibbs. “For working,” Kai added after a clearly intentional pause. “I know what kind of hours he likes to keep.” He turned and smiled at Tony, bringing him back into the conversation.

Tony’s eyes had drifted to the side of the house. Now that his vision had adjusted to the light he noticed a row of several surfboards varying in size and length leaning against the side of the house. “You surf?” He asked hopefully.

Kai nodded. “Of course. You manage to leave out _all_ the important parts, Gibbs?”

“Told him what he needs to know. Figured he’d get the rest on his own soon enough.” He walked over and traced the line of one of the boards almost affectionately.

“You don’t grow up a hundred yards from some of the best waves in the world without learning a thing or two.” Kai turned his attention back to Tony now who was watching Gibbs curiously. “I was riding the waves as soon as I was big enough to carry my own board.”

“So you’re pretty good then?”

“Not as good as some,” he admitted. “I had to learn the rhythm of the ocean. Others are born to it,” he said quietly.

There was something odd in Kai’s voice, something Tony knew must have to do with Gibbs but he didn’t have enough to quite connect all the dots yet. Still, he filed the conversation away for later review. “You ever give lessons?”

Kai laughed, a warm and pleasant sound. “If you can talk Gibbs into giving you some liberty I’ll put you on a board down in the bay anytime. But if you’re lucky I might be able to find you a better teacher before you leave the island.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, DiNozzo. Still got a pile of files to tackle tonight and who knows what waiting tomorrow.” Gibbs’ warning wasn’t as stern as it sounded thought and Tony thought there was even a hint of amusement there.

“You’re gonna at least let me feed you first, _hoaloha._ I won’t take no for an answer. We have some catching up to do and I can’t let Tony spend his first night on the island without some Hawaiian barbeque.” Kai draped and arm over Gibbs’ shoulders and led them toward the house.

Tony perked up at this. “Barbeque?”

“Best on the North Shore.”

“He’s not lying,” Gibbs agreed. “Think I put on ten pounds the last time I was here.”

“You were too skinny anyway,” Kai laughed.

Tony followed the two men into the house, marveling at the easy banter between them. He hesitated at the threshold, glancing speculatively one more time at the row of surfboards. He wondered, not for the first time, just what kind of secrets Leroy Jethro Gibbs was still hiding after all these years.

 


	3. Chapter 3

After Kai fed them enough sweet pork, grilled tuna, and tropical fruit to sate even Tony’s robust appetite, the silence, which had previously been filled by the sounds of fervent feasting, became somewhat awkward. It was clear the two other men in the room had things to say to one another which would not be said in his presence, so Tony excused himself, claiming the need to unpack before his Armani shirts became so wrinkled he’d need to find a dry cleaner.

Back in the guest house he forced his mind into action and away from whatever conversation was taking place in the main house by diving head first into the files they had obtained from Cabbot.

Though he did unpack first.

Tony guessed it was close to an hour later when Gibbs finally joined him. He looked up as the older man hesitated in front of where he had spread multiple folders out on a table in the small living room. Gibbs’ face looked somewhat less drawn than it had earlier, though his eyes were heavy and perhaps more red around the edges than mere fatigue could account for. Something squeezed inside his chest but when he opened his mouth to speak, Gibbs was there first.

“What do you have?” The demand came more gently than it usually did in the bullpen.

“Whole lot of nothing,” Tony gestured to the larger pile of files on the floor beside the table, “and a little bit of maybe.”

Gibbs nodded, glanced at the list of notes Tony had taken, and then pulled a file from his stack of maybes, settling into a linen-covered armchair and kicking up his feet on an ottoman.

There were a million questions Tony wanted to ask and each one took turns trying to push its way to the front. They buzzed on the tip of his tongue so that he pressed it to the roof of his mouth to keep silent, finally settling for something that would test the waters.

“Kai seems like a good friend,” Tony mused, seemingly absently, rubbing eyes which had begun to cross after examining far too many cryptic communiques. “You two must have been close once. Close for you, anyway.”

“What exactly are you asking, Tony?” Gibbs didn’t even bother looking up.

“Not asking. And I assume you’re not telling.” It was a bold leap but there was something between the two men and he was trying to make the pieces fit.

Gibbs finally did look up at this. “He wasn’t my lover, Tony. If that’s what you’re _not_ asking.” He almost sounded amused.

Why was there a part of him that felt relieved by this? He tried to shrug it off. “Wouldn’t matter if he was.” Tony looked down at his notes to hide the lie.

“Wouldn’t it?”

Tony didn’t bother to reply. He knew that Gibbs knew the answer to the question already.

“He likes you. Asked me if he could haul you out on a board tomorrow.” Gibbs smiled at this but it slowly faded. “Thinks you’re good for me. Thinks I don’t know it.” He appeared to be still puzzling this over himself. “Thinks I was idiot to run off to Mexico.”

There was a lump just below Tony’s throat which felt suspiciously like his heart. “Guess he really does know you pretty well.” The silence beat between them like a living thing for too long.

“You call McGee and Ziva on Fayed yet?” Gibbs skillfully changed the subject.

“Not yet.” He looked at his watch. “Just going on 0500 in DC. Thought I’d give them another hour and see if we came up with a side dish for them.”

Gibbs nodded and dug into the file in his lap, ending anything further on other, more dangerous topics. With a resigned sigh, Tony did the same.

* * *

 

Jethro had known Tony less than a day when he’d figured out how to tell that the younger man was onto something, even if he didn’t yet know what to make of it. He saw DiNozzo’s shoulders come up from across the room and watched as he began to shift piles of paper back and forth with purpose rather than with the seeming aimlessness of the last hour. He had also learned early on that Tony’s process was best left uninterrupted until he had fully formulated his own thoughts.

His mind went back to his conversation with Kai earlier. The man had always been able to read him like a book and even after several years he’d tuned into the important parts immediately. Kai had seen him at his worst, known him in the moments when he hadn’t even had the strength to keep the walls up, had seen him broken and bleeding. He didn’t know how to hide from him so he didn’t bother to try.

He hadn’t lied to Tony about their relationship. Kai had never been his lover, though they shared a different kind of intimacy, the kind which allowed the other man to see through his bullshit with surprising accuracy. He’d been off-center on a few points about Tony but had still hit far too close to the mark for comfort.

_“You have to tell him.” Kai’s voice was gentle but firm._

_“He won’t understand. He’s still too pissed at me for leaving in the first place.”_

_“Make him understand. Make him understand or you will lose him too, kaikua’ana.”_

“Found something.” Tony’s voice interrupted his memories. “Not sure exactly what.”  Clearly the younger man was still puzzling out his discovery. He pulled out three reports from different files and laid them on the end table in front of Gibbs.

“Three different sources and all of them have this same odd passage. ‘The vultures circle unnoticed above the desert’s graveyard at the invitation of the sleeping eagle.’ It’s a translation and each one of these varies just slightly, so part of it might be getting lost, but every one of these communications points back to a group calling themselves the Sword of Mohammed.”

“Anything else?”

“Not yet. Might be enough to get a running start with though,” Tony said hopefully, finishing just in time to cover a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Call it in to McGee and Ziva. Get them on it. We’re done for the night.” He closed the file he’d been going over, the one he’d been pretending to concentrate on for the last fifteen minutes. In truth, he was exhausted, weary right down to his bones, and he suspected it had to do with more than just the hour back on the East coast.

* * *

 

When Gibbs emerged from the cottage’s small bathroom, he found Tony perched on one of the twin beds in the room they would be sharing for the duration of their stay. The younger man had stripped to his boxers and the shock of bare skin tripped the switch of the projector in Jethro’s brain which bombarded him with sense-memories so dizzyingly strong he dug his fingernails painfully into the wood of the doorjamb to stay upright.

“You okay?” Tony’s voice sounded concerned.

Gibbs realized how his face must have looked to the younger man. “Headache. Just tired.”

He quickly busied himself with turning down the bed, eventually shedding his polo and khakis and laying them out on a chair next to Tony’s own clothing. He’d thought about taking the couch, knew it would probably be easier on both of them, but in truth, he found that a part of him was craving the younger man’s closeness, the remembered sound of his breathing as he slept. The island and the time with Kai had already brought things closer to the surface, feelings and memories which slashed at him like razors from just beneath his skin.

Tony brushed past him and paused on his way back into the living room. The touch seemed accidental but there was something hiding behind the younger man’s eyes as he watched him. “You want some water? Aspirin?”

“I’m good.” Gibbs cursed his cock as it thickened against his thigh from the brief contact. He forced himself to turn away from watching the way Tony’s muscles bunched and shifted with each small movement after letting his eyes trail one more time down the younger man’s impossibly long legs.

By the time Tony returned to the room he had already climbed between the sheets, turning onto his side to hide the evidence of his arousal. He felt Tony’s eyes on him, the other man’s hesitation at the foot of his bed, but he remained silent with his eyes closed. Eventually Tony flipped off the light went to his own bed.

It was some time later when Gibbs heard his name said quietly from across the room.

“Jethro, I know you aren’t sleeping.” It was louder than a whisper but was designed not to carry too far.

He didn’t respond but focused on keeping his breathing light and even. He couldn’t do this tonight. Not yet. Soon, but not yet.

“When you fall asleep you make this little noise with your lips when you breathe.  It’s kind of this *poof* sound and I used to think it was cute when you’d sleep on the couch during baseball and do it and then…” He stopped himself from going further off track. “Anyway, I know you can hear me.” He waited a moment. “You have to tell me what happened in the plane earlier, Jethro. You have to tell me what that was about. Because I look like I’m okay and sometimes I am, but most of the time…most of the time, Jethro, I think it might have been easier if you’d just stayed away. That it might have hurt less if you had just forgotten me forever in that explosion.” There was a sad desperation to Tony’s words which could only have come under the cover of darkness. “But then today there was the plane and you did the thing and…I see the way you look at me sometimes and it didn’t make sense until now. So you have to tell me. Because I’m really not okay, Jethro. I’m really not, and I need to know.”

Gibbs’ whole chest felt tight and his hands fisted in anger at himself for being the cause of Tony’s agony. He knew that the younger man was hurting and confused. He saw it every day despite the well-devised mask, and he lost sleep over it every damn night. In that moment he made a resolution, a decision he’d been putting off for far too long.

He listened as Tony quieted and eventually began to snore very softly across the room.

_Soon_

_The next morning_

Tony came awake to an unfamiliar combination of sounds and it took him a moment to orient to his surroundings. A noise like distant thunder hummed in his ears beneath the exotic calls of tropical birds, and the sound of a gentle rain pattered on the awning outside his open window. Stretching lazily and completely unaware of the time, he rolled over to find the bed across the room already vacant and made up with tight hospital corners, its extra blankets neatly folded at the end.

Slipping into a pair of board shorts and a light blue, linen shirt-only slightly wrinkled after careful folding in his duffel- Tony padded out into the main room of the guest house, sniffing the air and following his nose to the half-full coffee pot. He smiled at the mound of sugar packets on the counter and proceeded to make up his morning cup to his liking.

The files they had pored over the previous evening and their respective notes were still scattered over the small breakfast bar. Tony gave them a quick glance but a piece of paper sticking out of from between the entry door and its frame caught his attention. The sheet was empty save for a few lines scrawled in Gibbs’ hand.

_Out the front gate. 300 yards to your right._

He squinted down at the paper and then set it on the counter. Putting on a pair of the sandals Kai had given them both the night before, Tony took his coffee in hand, noticed that the sound of rain had already stopped, and headed out the front door.

The rain had indeed come to an end but a fine mist still hung in the air which was already thick and heavy with the scent of flowers. The main house was dark and the cars still in the driveway so neither Kai nor Gibbs could be far. In the yard, the distant thunderous roar was clearer, and as Tony unlatched the heavy wooden gate and let it swing open, his mind finally clicked into gear as his jaw dropped.

Across the two lane highway, not one hundred yards from where he was standing, a line of dark rock marked the edge of a short, steep slope which descended to a stony shore where monstrous waves rolled in and crashed, and a blue-green ocean churned and roiled beneath the slowly lifting sky. The view was so extraordinarily striking that it stole his breath for a moment.

Tony was roused from his awe by a pickup truck passing a scarce foot and a half away and realized he had wandered very close to the edge of the road, seemingly drawn by the incredible tableau before him. Shutting the gate carefully, he quickly jogged across the road and onto a narrow path which followed the edge of the ocean in the direction Gibbs’ note had instructed him to take.

It wasn’t difficult to spot his destination, though he didn’t immediately comprehend why he had been sent there. Approximately three hundred yards up the shore, a wide sandy beach opened up between the rocks. It was largely empty. Tony’s watch said it was barely 6am, and the sky was just lightening up after the morning rain. As he came closer he could see that the waves were less chaotic and rolled to the shore in predictable ebbs and flows after breaking a few hundred yards out. The azure waters came to white-tipped peaks and then rolled over to form beautiful, barrel shaped waves which raced toward the beach.

Tony squinted into the slight mist, his eyes catching a few darker shapes which bobbed in the calmer waters just past the break. Just as his mind registered what it was seeing, one of the shapes began to move as the ocean swelled beneath it. A moment later, a tall man in a wet suit popped up and dropped down the face of the massive white-capped wave, the peak of which towered at least eight feet above him. Tony watched in awe as the surfer rode the quick-closing pipe expertly, seeming to defy both the laws of motion and gravity, until the swell dissolved into churning white foam.

Just as the first man finished and began to swim for shore, a second surfer crested the top of a colossal wave, easily fifteen feet in height. Where the first man had been precise, had been skilled, the second was fluid, fluid as the water was fluid, instinctively skimming the surface in perfect balance and harmony with the ever evolving wave as it bore him closer shore. As Tony watched, the sun suddenly emerged from behind thinning clouds, turning the sea to impossible jeweled greens and blues. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the man moving toward him, borne on a shifting surge. Something about this man, about each one of his movements, was utterly magnetic and he stood on the shore transfixed, completely  unaware that he was no longer alone.

“Natural born _kanaka he’e nalu_. First time I put him on a board I knew it. Feels the wave like it’s a part of him. Leroy Jethro Gibbs may be a hardened man sometimes but the ocean is in his soul just as much as any _kama’aina._ Maybe more than most. _”_

Tony pulled his eyes away from the ocean at the sound of Kai’s voice speaking above the roar of the waves. The dark haired man was wearing a wet suit and his board sat a few feet away in the sand. With the water still beaded on his skin, Tony quickly realized that Kai had been the first surfer he’d watched. Eyes widening as the understanding of what he’d just been witness to hit him like a wave to the chest, his head snapped back front just in time to see the surfer he’d been enraptured by sink into roiling white foam as his ride finally collapsed beneath him. He looked back to Kai.

“I don’t…when?” Tony’s head was trying desperately to put pieces in place.

Kai shook his head gently. “Not my story to tell.”

Gibbs was coming close to shore now, riding the dying swells on the way in.

“Going back up to the house. Unless things have changed, I know Jethro won’t take much more than coffee but I’ll leave breakfast out for you before I go.” One large hand squeezed Tony’s shoulder. “He has things he needs to tell you, things that won’t be easy for him. You should listen.” With that, Kai easily hefted his board beneath an arm and began walking in the direction of the trail Tony had just come down.

* * *

 

It took a few minutes for Gibbs to struggle to shore. After an hour in the ocean his limbs felt heavy but his soul felt light. He’d forgotten the power of the water here. California and even Mexico couldn’t hold a candle to this kind of surf and he had been both challenged and invigorated by the pounding, turbulent sea.

When he finally managed to get his feet under him and swipe his dripping hair back from his forehead, Jethro paused with the surf swirling around his calves as he caught sight of Tony watching from several feet away. While he’d expected to find him here, the reality of it in his current state of mind was still jarring. He had built carefully constructed walls to contain his feelings for the younger man, even before his sudden return to NCIS. Already, in this place, after the events of the previous day, those walls were softer, more vulnerable. At this precise moment they were virtually non-existent, and Tony’s long-legged stance, the billow of his half-open linen shirt in the warm morning breeze, the curious tilt of his neck, set up the unwanted ache in his chest that had been more and more difficult to ignore since the first day of his homecoming. It was the same one that had kept him up through most of the night last night.

Hefting the somehow comforting weight of his board like a shield, Gibbs made his way through the damp sand to where Tony stood, seemingly rooted at the foot of a graceful palm surrounded by a berm of short grass. Without a word, he carefully leaned the board against the tree and waited.

He didn’t have long.

“So,” Tony didn’t turn to face him but rather stood gazing out at the ocean as he spoke, “I’m guessing that wasn’t something you just picked up after a couple of quick lessons this morning.”

“No,” he replied, dropping down onto the piece of grass which had been sheltered from the morning rain by the leafy fronds above.

“You looked… _beautiful_ out there. You were beautiful, Jethro.” Tony’s voice was hushed.

“Tony…” He had no idea how to begin this.

“Exactly how many lives _have_ you lived?” This time Tony rounded on him, though his tone was more awed than accusatory.

“Not a different life, Tony. Just a different time.” He shook his head and stared at the shifting sand. A moment later he felt the break in the wind as Tony came to sit beside him.

“You’re going to have to give me more than that this time, Jethro. Think I need to hear it.”

The sound of crashing waves filled the silence. Tony was right, he did need to hear it. And more than that, Jethro realized he needed, maybe even _wanted_ to tell him. It was time.

“Last night you asked me about the plane, about what that meant. If you want me to answer that, if you want to know why I brought you here, there are other things you need to know first.”

“So tell me.” Tony made it sound like the simplest thing in the world.

Jethro took a deep breath. “Came here after…after Shannon and Kelly.” He let it hang there between them for a moment, surprised by the clarity of his voice against the stab of pain that hit his chest at their names. “Kai and I’d been at Pendleton together. He was always talking about the big waves he’d surfed back here and how he needed to get back on a board. One weekend he dragged a bunch of us down to the shore. Owed him a favor or I never would have even gone.” He couldn’t help the rueful smile at the memory. “We rented some boards, he taught us a few things. Most of the guys bit the sand pretty hard that first day and never came back.”

“But you did?” Tony supplied.

He nodded. “I did. Oh, I ate my fair share of beach. Didn’t make any sense to me, why I kept showing up every morning. Kai seemed to know something I didn’t at the time.”

“He called you a _kanaka he’e nalu,_ or something like that.” Tony offered.

Gibbs laughed. “It just means ‘surfer’, but to him it’s a pretty big compliment. Especially for a _haole_ like me.”

“Grew up in the middle of coal country. Pennsylvania,” Gibbs continued.  He was pretty sure Tony already knew this part but he gave it anyway. “Ocean was something new to me but…somehow it feels like part of me when I’m on that board. Or I’m part of it. For those few minutes on that wave, nothing else in the entire world even exists.”

“I don’t understand. I thought you were happy when you were with Shannon. Why would you want to escape?”

He looked up and smiled at this. “Marriage is never easy, Tony, even when it’s good.” He was quiet for a minute. There were roads he wasn’t sure he was ready to go down with the younger man yet. Old roads he hadn’t travelled in a long time. “You think I became a sniper without some baggage to start with? I was…I _am_ , angry, Tony. About a lot of things. Some of them I don’t even remember any more. Shannon and Kelly, they made that better, made it not matter for a while, but even they didn’t make it go away.” He swallowed the lump he could feel in his throat.

“Jethro.” The ache in Tony’s voice mirrored his own.

He wanted to stop but he needed to keep going. This was it, this was the moment. Whatever else happened from here, Tony had earned this much from him and he was going to give it no matter the cost. “When they were gone,” he took a deep shaky breath and stared out at the ocean, trying to touch the calm of it again. “When they were gone, the anger and the pain were the only things left. I was drowning in them. Almost let them pull me under.”

Tony’s hand moved closer to him on the grass but the younger man seemed to sense that he didn’t want to be touched right now.

“Kai came when I was in the hospital. Before I came back. And he kept coming when everyone else stopped. His tour was up and he was heading back here on terminal leave after a stop at Pendleton. Kept at me to come stay with him. Wouldn’t let up no matter how many times I kicked him out and pushed him away. Persistent to a fault.” Jethro smiled. “Reminds me a little of someone else I know.”

This time Tony’s fingers brushed fleetingly against his shoulder and Jethro reached up and clasped them tightly in his own. “When I came here, I was lost. I wasn’t looking for answers or a way back because I didn’t want one. Not then. I couldn’t even begin to think past all of it. Kai knew me better than I knew myself. Knew what I needed. He dragged me down to this beach every damn morning, practically threw me on my board and hauled me into the water.”

“You can’t be angry out there. The ocean…it forces you to find balance. Chews you up if you don’t.” He squeezed Tony’s fingers. “One morning I came down and the waves were just tearing up the shore. Must have been twenty, twenty five feet. Biggest sets I ever saw. A few guys were going out, coming in beat to hell more often than not.” He paused. This next part was something he hadn’t thought about in a long time, hadn’t wanted to. “I knew better but that didn’t stop me. I fought my way out past the break, arms burning, chest feelin’ like it was gonna split open. Don’t even remember how long I sat out there waiting.”

“When my wave finally came I knew it immediately. Felt it swell up beneath me like it just…like it _wanted_ me to ride it. When I dropped in, it was like staring down the side of a three story building, and for just a minute I had it.” He closed his eyes, realizing that in this place he could almost touch the memory of that moment. “It was like nothing else in the world. Every single thing inside me just disappeared. The barrel closed over me and it was like seeing everything in focus for the first time.”

“And then there was a flash. Just a split second where the pain found me again and I lost it. I went down hard, got rolled over and over, clipped the side of the reef with my shoulder. When I tried to come up, another wave just pushed me back under again, and again. I’d get a quick breath and go right back down.” His voice trailed off. “Eventually I just stopped fighting. There was peace under the water, no more struggling, and I didn’t really want to keep going in a world where the only thing left of my family was pain, so I just…I just gave up.”

“Doesn’t sound like the Leroy Jethro Gibbs I know,” Tony said gently.

“Maybe it wasn’t, I don’t know anymore. Think maybe part of who I was got left right out there, at the bottom of all that water.” He pointed out to the churning sea.

“But you’re here now,” Tony prompted.

“I am. But not by choice. At least not the choice I made that day,” he admitted. “Just before I passed out I felt someone grab me by the back of my wetsuit. Two guys on a jet ski pulled me out, dragged me back into shore, and pumped the water out of my lungs.” He turned to face Tony now. “I didn’t choose to live that day, Tony.” Jethro desperately needed him to understand.

“Maybe not. But you chose every day after that. You chose today.” Tony said simply, as if this thing that Gibbs had struggled for years to explain to himself was the easiest thing in the world for him.

He nodded.

“What else?”

“The explosion. Mexico.”

“Wondered when we were gonna get around to that part.” He almost sounded nervous.

“When that happened it was like being right back at square one again, at least in the beginning. The only thing that felt familiar was the pain. And then Franks…” He finally let go of Tony’s hand. “I found the ocean again when I was in Mexico. Pretty good surf down there. I started to remember things. Like something inside me was gradually opening at the same time the hurt was closing itself off again. And the things I remembered about you…they didn’t make any sense at first.”

“How long? How long since you remembered? How long did you wait?” The hurt in Tony’s voice was palpable and it was clear he was sitting on a pile of anger and pain.

“All I had were pieces, Tony. Just…flashes. Took some time to begin to put them together. To make things make sense.” He didn’t have an excuse or an apology big enough for this and he knew it.

“I spent months, _months_ , trying to figure out how to forget you, how to forget the way you looked through me when you walked away from NCIS, walked away from what we… You didn’t just walk away from a job, you walked away from _me,_ Jethro. And I get that you were in pain, and knowing that an explosion knocked you on your ass and fucked with your head? That almost made it possible for me to forgive my boss for the way he treated his team. Almost. But I was in hell too, Jethro. I was in fucking hell.” Tony’s voice was an angry, throbbing thing, thick with unspent emotion. “So what I’d like to know is, how long were you gonna leave me there after you remembered that we were…whatever the hell we were to each other?”

“Until I figured out how to stop loving you.” The words were out before he could swalow them and far louder than he intended them to be.

Tony blinked back at him, the fire of his anger suddenly quenched. The younger man looked as shocked by the admission as he was and it took Tony a moment to recover. “And did you?” He asked quietly, the words almost drowned by the sound of the surf.

It would have been easy. The lie was right there, perched on the edge of his lips. But Tony could read him better than anyone he’d known with the exception of at least one wife, and he was just so fucking tired of half-truths. “Not for one second.” Jethro felt the honesty of those four words like a bullet to the chest as he pulled Tony into a desperate kiss.

* * *

 

Tony barely had time to take a breath before Jethro’s palm was at his neck, thumb was at his jaw, mouth was crashing into his. The taste of those lips was saltwater and familiarity, the tongue pulsing gently between his lips to sweep against his own, a bittersweet reunion. He wanted to push Gibbs away and pull him closer all at once, but the desperate fingers clinging to his nape made him moan sweetly and lean into the kiss, lean into the pain and the fear that had almost undone him a few months ago.

When it was over, Jethro didn’t pull away, just bowed into him like his life depended on the touch. “I never stopped loving you for one second.”

The words, throat-worn and desperate, caressed his lips and made him tremble, but before he could digest them, Tony was released. The needy weight of Gibbs’ palm became the slow trail of fingertips across his jaw and then it was over. He contemplated Jethro warily across the short distance, unsure about the almost unrecognizable calm that seemed to have settled over the other man.

“You can’t do that.” Tony raised the back of his hand to his mouth. “You can’t tell me that you love me and kiss me like that and then take it back and go away again, Jethro. You can’t.”

“Not goin’ anywhere, Tony. Doesn’t mean I know what the answers are yet,” Gibbs said gently.

Relaxing only slightly, Tony let his hand fall back to his lap. “Was coming here part of finding those answers?

“Thought it might be a start, yeah,” he answered honestly. “But we still have a job to do.”

“Tell me again. Tell me why you really came back from Mexico.” Tony pinned him in place with eyes which were softer than they had been a moment before but no less intense.

“I didn’t lie to you about my reasons, Tony.”

“You have to say it, Jethro. You have to say it so I can decide whether or not I believe you, whether or not I can ever trust it.”

“I came back because I had to finish what I started.” He was avoiding, he knew it.

Tony shook his head. “Not good enough.”

“It’s the truth. I don’t know what else you want from me.” Except that he did. And the words were right there, practically ready to leap off of his tongue if he would only quit swallowing them down.

“I need more than that, Jethro. If you want me to even think about it, there has to be more.” Tony was calm now, maddeningly so.

“God damn it, Tony, I came back for you. Is that what you need to hear?”

Tony was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said quietly.

“Tony…”He wanted to tell him that he couldn’t make promises, that he was still putting pieces together, but the look in the younger man’s eyes as he suddenly stood stopped him flat.

“I said ‘okay’.” With a shake of his head, Tony cut off whatever Gibbs had intended to follow with. “But I won’t let you break me like that again, Jethro. I won’t let you walk away. You wanna figure this out? Fine. Let’s figure it out. But if you leave again? If you walk out on me or my team? I will tear the world apart to hunt you down, and I will drag you back to face them, do you understand me? And then _I_ will leave _you_. And you will never find me, no matter how long or how far you go to look for me.”

Jethro shuddered at the flat vehemence of Tony’s voice. He’d thought about this. He’d thought about it hard. And Gibbs had no doubt that every word he spoke was absolute truth. He rose slowly, held the younger man’s eyes deliberately. “Won’t walk out again. Can’t promise I can make this work, Tony, but I can promise you that.” His thumb grazed Tony’s cheek and his chest tightened at the way the other man flinched slightly from his touch. Cold fingers wrapped around his own and forced his hand down and away but did not let go.

“Then let’s do the job we came here for and everything else…everything else we’ll figure out as we go.” His shoulders had come down an inch or two but Tony was still clearly a little edgy.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Tony’s fingers slowly unwound from around his own and Jethro turned to grab his board before they walked back up the beach toward the house.

“But really, surfing?” Tony looked at him somewhat incredulously as they walked.

“Really,” Jethro laughed, glad to hear the lighter tone in the younger man’s voice


	4. Chapter 4

****

Tony’s hand fisted and flattened restlessly against the leg of his pants. They weren’t officially due back at Pearl for another five hours but the information they had gleaned the night before meant there was work to do and for now, what they had begun on the beach would have to wait.

He kept glancing over at Gibbs, trying to convince himself that the events of the morning weren’t, in fact, merely a dream inspired by the tropical night breezes and some serious sleep deprivation. Finally deciding to tempt fate, he reached out a tentative hand and let it rest lightly on Gibbs’ thigh, just above his knee. It was a familiar gesture, one born of early mornings on the way to the Navy yard in the weeks before Gibbs fled NCIS, made habit when things were still new and promising and thrillingly uncertain. It was also one he had missed desperately and which scared the hell out of him now.

Tony felt muscle tighten beneath his fingertips and half-expected the touch to be rebuked. Instead, the other man’s fingers wrapped around his own and squeezed lightly. The simple reflexivity of the action made his chest ache and he looked out the window to hide his slightly wistful smile. It was a small step but it was an important one for both of them.

The buzz of Gibbs’ cell phone a moment later made Tony pull his hand away abruptly, but to his surprise, Gibbs tightened his grip and held him just a few seconds longer.

“It’s Ziva.” Tony checked the caller ID.

“Speaker.”

He flipped open the phone and set it on the dash.

“What did you find on Fayed?” Gibbs wasted no time in getting to the point.

“Too much.” Her voice sounded grave even with the tininess of the phone. “McGee and Abby are-how did you put it, McGee? Burning down the walls?”

“We’re currently trying to get access to the files CIA, NSA, and Homeland have on Fayed but they’re being slow to turn over information, even to the director. We might have to get creative with their firewalls, Boss,” he said cryptically.

“Do what you have to do,” Gibbs said flatly. “I don’t know how time sensitive this is and there’s already been a delay. We’ve got another week until the majority of vessels are in place for PACRIM but there’s already a foreign leadership presence on base here. Too target rich for my comfort.”

 “According to my contacts at Mossad, Fayed and the Sword of Mohammed are believed to be responsible for at least a dozen bombings in Israel, Turkey, Syria, and most recently the Ukraine. All targets were military but had a high number of civilian casualties as well. Fayed seems to prefer a body count.”

McGee’s voice interrupted. “I’m putting everything into an email, Boss. Sending it now.”

“What about the thing with the ‘desert’s graveyard’?” Tony asked, mind immediately switching gears. “There’s no desert on this island.”

“The translation is accurate,” Ziva confirmed, “however I do not know its meaning. I could find no other references to it.”

“Good work. Keep digging into the CIA files and let me know when you have something. We’re headed to the base now.”

Tony flipped the phone closed. “I don’t think this is a dead lead, Boss.”

“Me neither.” They drove in silence for awhile, merging onto the freeway south of Schofield Barracks. They were an exit or two away from the one that would take them back to Pearl when Gibbs suddenly jerked the wheel to the right, veering onto a different ramp without warning. “Damn it,” he swore, joining a line of traffic heading into a massive parking lot.

“What did I miss?” Tony had managed to hang onto the files in his lap but just barely.

“The desert’s graveyard.” Jethro pointed to a sign ahead of them that read _USS Arizona Memorial_. “Military target, civilian casualties.” He pulled into a spot reserved for military personnel at the front and flashed his badge to the guard who had immediately started for the vehicle before seeing the government tags.

“This is a security nightmare,” Tony muttered as they followed the herds of people headed for ticket windows and tours. “And in the middle of a Naval base.”

They passed up the lines, gift shops, and museums and made their way down to the water where there was an excellent view of the harbor and its numerous memorials. Tony would have liked to see it under less pressing circumstances.

“We looking for anything in particular?” He scanned crowds and buildings with a trained eye.

Gibbs stopped dead and pointed to the horizon. “We’re looking for that.”

Tony followed his arm. “Is that a…”

“Tourist charter helicopter,” Gibbs confirmed without Tony finishing his question.

“In military airspace?” he asked incredulously.

“Special arrangement.” Gibbs shaded his eyes and followed the path of the low-flying helicopter.

“Circling vultures,” Tony muttered. “It was right under their noses. How many of them are there?” He had already spotted another on the horizon.

“Too many. And we need to get them out of the air.” He turned and made a bee line through the gathered throng and Tony had to jog a few steps to keep up.

“Gonna be a lot of disappointed tourists.”

“Better than a whole lot of dead tourists,” Gibbs countered.

In the end it took them almost a half hour to clear the checkpoints and arrive back at the NCIS offices. Tony called Cabbot on the way and filled him in on what they knew and what they suspected and the FCI team was waiting for them when they entered.

“Get that email from McGee and find out where they’re at with Homeland and the rest of the alphabet. I’ll call Morrow myself if I have to.”

Cabbot was already moving aside paperwork to make room for Gibbs but Spencer and Borling were just standing by, seemingly awed at the way the senior agent had come in and taken over.

“I need email access and a printer,” Tony approached Borling who was probably the safest of the pair.

“Sure.” Borling led him over to a desk which seemed to be unoccupied, while still glancing over his shoulder to where Gibbs and Cabbot had their heads together. “Does he always do that?”

“What? Take over?” Tony grinned.

“Yeah.”  

“Pretty much,” Tony admitted. “Listen, just move when he says move and don’t ask too many questions. His bark is usually worse than his bite unless you’re on the other side of the interrogation table, but it’s a helluva bark.” Tony was already busily logging on and downloading everything McGee had sent so far. “And Borling?” Tony called to the younger agent who was already moving back toward his own desk. “You might want to watch the back of your head for the next week.”

* * *

 

“They’ll give us 48 hours,” Cabbot said as he hung up the phone, his frustration obvious.

“Why not ground them until we neutralize the threat?” Tony asked.

“Tourism is important business on Oahu, DiNozzo, and since we can’t tell them why we’re grounding them, we get 48 hours,” the other agent explained. “We may not like it but it’s better than nothing.”  

“We also don’t want to tip off Fayed and risk him running,” Gibbs added.

Cabbot nodded. “It’s not unheard of for us to close down airspace for short periods of time when we have special operations taking place on base.”

“We don’t know exactly what the target is and whether he’s targeting today, tomorrow, or next Tuesday. We have 48 hours to figure it out.” Gibbs came to stand beside Tony as he spoke and he could feel the familiar heat rolling off the older man in waves.

Agent Spencer joined them. “I’ve got the towers at Hickham and the lookouts at Pearl on high alert. The choppers can fly beneath their radar, but with everything non-military grounded they’ll be watching closely.”

“DiNozzo, you and Spencer check in with McGee, tell him I want an update every half hour. Then I want a list of every single company that has permission to fly in that airspace and every aircraft they own.”

“On it, Boss.” Tony had to admit, for him, this was the fun part. Things moved fast, he had a mission, a purpose. And if his eyes lingered a little longer than necessary on Gibbs’ backside as he turned away, he was certain everyone else was too busy to notice.

“So, you and Agent Gibbs,” Spencer said speculatively as they settled in at her desk, her mouth turning up at the edges. “Have to admit, I didn’t see that one coming.” She didn’t bother looking up from her computer screen.

Tony’s head snapped up. Spencer already put him off his game and he didn’t like the implication. “See what coming?”

“Come on, your eyes were practically glued to his ass a minute ago. And the way he looks at you? I misjudged you, Agent DiNozzo. Of course you can’t really blame me with all the ‘you’re really pretty’ crap from last night.”

Tony blinked in surprise. Not only had she seen right through him, she actually seemed to be warming to him. “Yeah, well, it’s complicated,” he fumbled. “And he’s my Boss. So I’d rather not talk about it.”

“There aren’t any specific NCIS rules against fraternization.” She tapped rapidly at her keyboard as she talked.

“There are other kinds of rules, believe me. Like I said, it’s complicated.” He dug his cell phone out and began to dial.

“The way you two look at each other?” Spencer laid a hand on Tony’s wrist to still him, “Trust me, DiNozzo, it’s not that complicated.”

He could feel the heat in his face and he snuck a quick glance over at Gibbs and then grinned back at his phone as he resumed dialing McGee’s number.

“Tell McGee to quit playing grab ass with Abby in the lab and get me something I can use,” Gibbs barked as he came stalking over a moment later.

Tony set the phone on the desk and slipped in next to Spencer who moved aside. “McGee’s running a list and cross-referencing all Fayed’s known aliases from CIA, Homeland, NSA and Mossad as well as all known or suspected members of the Sword of Mohammed against passports coming into the US.” The screen in front of him mirrored what McGee was doing back in the DC office.

“Got three hits already, Boss.” McGee’s voice came through the open phone on the desktop.

“Spencer, get me profiles on all of them with BOLOs out to all local agencies within the hour. Borling, get a list of every employee at every company that has permission to enter the base’s airspace, look for any new hires in the past year, anyone who doesn’t completely fit. McGee, you keep looking. Cabbot, get your Homeland guys in here. Find out if anyone’s been tracking these bastards. DiNozzo, you’re with me.” He snatched the list of charter companies from the top of the desk.

“Where we headed, Boss?”

“Road trip,” Gibbs headed for the exit.

“Sweet.” Tony grinned, pausing to grab his bag from beneath his temporary desk. Cabbot stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Is he always like this?” The FCI team leader asked, sounding almost as awed as Borling.

“Pretty much.” Tony grinned and trotted for the exit.

* * *

 

Three hours later they had checked two of the major charter companies on the island and found nothing out of the ordinary. Employee files checked out, registration numbers were accurate, owners were surprisingly cooperative, and they were no closer to even knowing what in the hell they were looking for.

As Gibbs and Tony pulled through the gates of Bright Sky charters and toward its row of four sky-blue hangars, nothing immediately stood out.

A man in khakis and a Hawaiian-print shirt emerged from an open hangar and approached them as they parked.

“How can I help you, gentleman?” he asked pleasantly.

“You can help up find the owner.” Gibbs held his creds out for the man to see.

“I’m Roger Chambers. My brother Bill and I own Bright Sky. You here to tell me why my birds are on the ground and I’m losing business by the hour?”

“We’re here to see if you’ve seen any of these men.” Tony held out the photos of the men McGee’s search had turned up earlier.

Chambers studied the photos, pausing at the last one. “This is a joke, right?” He held up a photo.

“You know this man?” Gibbs immediately went on alert.

“Well, I don’t know who Hussein Nasir is, but this is a picture of Sam Ames, my mechanic.”

“Where is he now?” Tony’s fingers were already unsnapping the holster at his belt.

“Hangar 3, working on a tail rotor.” Chambers pointed to the last building in the row, still looking dumbfounded.

“Get back inside and stay out of the way. If you’ve got an office, lock yourself in it until we tell you to come out.” Gibbs motioned Chambers back toward the building he had come from.

“You’re not gonna shoot him are you?” Chambers looked from Tony to Gibbs. “It’s just that he’s a _really_ good mechanic.”

“Go,” Gibbs barked, unholstering his own weapon.

The main door to the hanger bay Chambers had indicated was closed. Tony and Gibbs found a window but it was too high to offer any kind of view. “Love going in blind,” Tony sighed.

“Eyes open. Lot of open space with no cover,” Gibbs said as they positioned themselves outside the smaller entry to the side of the building.

“And no vest.” Tony held the older man’s eyes for a moment and then nodded. A moment later, Gibbs turned the nob quietly and they entered on silent feet, going to each side of the door immediately to scan the room.

A ladder was positioned near the tail of a helicopter and a drop cloth littered with fluids and various parts covered the ground beneath it. There was no one immediately visible in the hangar but there were tall rows of shelves and crates lining one back wall which appeared to contain a supply of spare parts, and they moved toward these cautiously.

The sound of metal falling on concrete reached Tony’s ears from somewhere off to their left. “Sam Ames?” The sound echoed through the open space.

There was a door to Tony’s right and he gestured to it as Gibbs circled around the last row of shelves. The next 30 seconds were a blur.

A tall row of shelves filled with parts and boxes suddenly toppled toward Tony and it was only quick reflexes and a strong sense of self-preservation which kept him from being crushed. As it was, he was on his ass and rolling the last few inches out of the way as he caught sight of their target moving quickly toward the exit. But it was the weapon clutched in the other man’s hands that nearly stopped his heart.

“Gun!” Tony yelled, even as the first bullet hit the concrete far too close to his head, sending an explosion of cement shards into his face and hair even as he rolled toward the semi-cover of the debris from the fallen shelves.

“Drop your weapon. Down on the ground. Now!”

Gibbs’ voice was sharp and clear in Tony’s ears despite the pounding of his pulse and he raised his weapon just in time to see Ames or Nasir or whoever the hell he was pause and put the gun to his own head.

“Don’t do it!” Gibbs’ warned.

Tony flinched at the sound of the gun’s echoing report but as Nasir’s body hit the concrete he knew there was nothing he could have done.

“You okay?” Gibbs extended a hand and helped Tony up a moment later.

“Never better, Boss.” He ruffled his hair to shed the dust and Gibbs’ fingers joined his, searching intently for any injury.

“He didn’t hit you?” His face was nearly ghost white.

“Hey.” Tony took his hands to still his frantic movements. “Missed me by a mile.” He smiled, realizing the shot had been a little too close, even for his own comfort. “I’m fine, Jethro.” This was gentler, less for his boss and more for the man who’d sat on a beach and told him he loved him mere hours ago.

Gibbs nodded, finally satisfied. “He’s not.”

They walked over to where Nasir lay, dark red blood pooling around his head like a macabre halo. “I hate it when they do that,” Tony sighed.

“Call it in to Cabbot. I’ll get Chambers out of the bunker. Tell Cabbot to get some other teams on the rest of the list and to give them a heads-up on how this went down. We’re gonna be here awhile.”  

* * *

 

They didn’t make it back to NCIS until four hours later.

“There’s something hinky about the inventory at Bright Sky,” Abby’s voice told him from the speaker phone.

“Define ‘hinky’,” Gibbs ordered.

“Well, unless they’ve had a bunch of repairs lately, there should be more there. I’ve cross checked the shipments received and they just aren’t matching up. There’s a whole lot of missing parts, Gibbs.”

“What’s a ‘whole lot’, Abbs?” Gibbs leaned over Tony’s shoulder and looked at the information coming in on the screen from DC.

“Almost enough to build an entire helicopter from the ground up,” she said gravely.

“Damn.”

“Not the word McGee and I used but it will do.” They could almost hear her smirk through the phone.

“Let me know if you find anything else worth paying attention to.”

“Actually, I wasn’t done yet. McGee did some checking on that box you sent us photos of. By the way, how do they _not_ have a tech team there?”

“Just get on with it, McGee.”  

“At first I thought it was just a spare transponder.” McGee’s voice took over. “But then when we examined all the images, there were a few things I couldn’t account for. You’ll have to have someone there open it up and check for sure but I think it’s actually designed to mimic another transponder’s signal,” he explained.

“So to someone watching a radar, our rogue pilot could look just like a recognized aircraft, no matter what he’s flying?” Tony asked.

“Exactly. They wouldn’t even need to hijack another chopper.” McGee confirmed.

“That’s good work. Maybe I should leave you two on your own more often.” Gibbs was already halfway across the room. 

“Miss you, Gibbs! And you too Tony!”

“Miss you too, Abbs. Good job, Probie.” Tony smiled as he ended the call.

* * *

 

“Like looking for a damn needle in a haystack,” Gibbs growled as he and Tony drove back toward Kai’s house a few hours later. “We should have stayed on it.”

“There are three other teams working through the night. How do you propose find we a single helicopter, that might not even _be_ a whole helicopter yet, on an island this size? Go door to door? We can’t do everything ourselves and staying up all night and being too tired to work tomorrow when there are fifty other agents on base right now doesn’t do anyone any good. Cabbot said he’d call.” Tony actually flinched when the words were finally out.

Gibbs glared at him across the seat.

“Sorry, Boss. Must be jetlag.” He went back to watching the miles of ocean pass by them. Before he knew it they were pulling into the driveway back at the house. It was late evening but there were still a few hours of daylight left if Tony judged correctly. Time on the island seemed to move differently somehow.

The silence that had settled between them on the ride from the base had continued after their arrival back at the guesthouse so Tony was surprised when Gibbs returned from checking in with Kai and tossed a wetsuit into his lap.

“Put this on.” He was already unbuttoning his own shirt and heading for the bedroom, a matching suit in hand.

“Seriously?” Tony’s eyes lit up.

“Only if you get your ass in gear in the next five minutes. We’re losing daylight.”

Kai was waiting for them at the front of the main house next to the row of surfboards Tony had noticed the night before. He was only slightly disappointed to realize it wouldn’t be just him and Jethro on this particular adventure.

“Don’t worry. Gibbs is a better teacher than I’ll ever be. I’m just coming along to make sure you don’t drown.” Kai winked at him knowingly. “This is my beginner board. Even a _haole_ can ride Bertha, here.” He grinned and handed him the longest and widest of the surfboards along the wall.

“Bertha, huh?” He wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.

“She may be big but she’s steady and reliable.” Kai laughed.

Even with its size the board was lighter than Tony expected it to be though walking it to the beach proved to be more difficult.

* * *

 

“You have to pop up,” Gibbs instructed. “Both feet at the same time.”

“I did.” Tony said defensively. After a half hour they hadn’t even made it into the water and he was ready to throw Gibbs and the board in head first. Kai had wisely taken a seat away from the action and was watching with obvious amusement.

“Your back foot was half off the board. You’d have wiped out before you even got up. Go again.”

Tony’s abs and arms were burning and he was using muscles he didn’t even know he had. He pushed his frustrations aside and focused on bringing his legs up under him in tandem. This time there was no denying that the move felt different and his feet landed solidly on the board.

“Woohoo!” He raised an arm up over his head in triumph.

“That was good,” Gibbs agreed. “Now do it ten more times just like that and we’ll talk about hitting the water.”

In the next hour Gibbs and Kai taught him how to dive under incoming waves, how to roll, and how to balance in the relatively calm water of a sheltered bay to one side of the larger beach. The sun was getting low on the horizon and Tony was beginning to lose hope that he would ever get on a wave today.

“Now or never, Tony. Let’s paddle out,” Gibbs pulled himself up and began to move away in long, confident strokes.

Tony hesitated. The waves in the bay were smaller now than they had been that morning but they were still a little intimidating and his muscles were already aching. Still, he wasn’t about to bail now. Arms burning with every stroke, he followed Gibbs toward the break with Kai right behind him. The older man paused to wait for them in the calmer waters.

“Head through that break in the waves. Water will carry us right out where we want to be. I’ll be right behind you.” Gibbs motioned him toward a point in the center of the bay where the current seemed to be flowing out.

“And I’ll be right here to make sure you don’t drown when you wipe out,” Kai grinned at him.

Tony fought his way through the surf toward the break. He could feel the flow of the water around him and Gibbs was right, he could tell the moment he hit the rip tide that was funneling water out of the bay. Suddenly he was working with the sea instead of against it. And just like that he was past the break, heading out of the flow and into deep, calm water where Gibbs joined him. Tony sat upright, feet hanging into the water as he turned to face the shore.

“So, I just pick a wave and go?” Now that they were out here, Tony wasn’t sure quite what was supposed to happen next.

“No, now we wait.” Gibbs came up beside him, so close that their legs touched as they bobbed on the surface of the ocean.

“What are we waiting for?”

Gibbs laughed and shook his head. “Only half of surfing is about skill on a board. The rest is up here.” He tapped the side of his head.

“Are we gonna wax the floors next?” Tony smiled.

Gibbs raised an eyebrow.

“Wax on-wax off? ‘The Karate Kid’?” Tony said awkwardly. He knew it was the fear talking. “Never mind.”

“A good surfer reads the waves. Can tell this one’s gonna break here or there,” he pointed, “or if the barrel’s just gonna close up. You have to learn the ocean.”

“Kai said you were born to it.”

“Kai believes what he believes. I’m just more observant than most. I spend time watching. But even that’s only part of it.”

Tony waited for him to continue.

“Out here, this is the place you have to let go, let yourself be part of something bigger for just a minute. The ocean doesn’t give a shit about you. She’s bigger than you and she’ll chew you up and spit you out again without a second thought if you fight her. And before you can ride her, you have to let go of everything else.”

This was a Gibbs he didn’t know. There was something open about him that Tony had never seen before. The sharp edges he had always known were softer, the towering walls less high. “I’m afraid,” Tony confessed, “afraid of loving you too much when you can’t remember half of what you felt for me, afraid of losing you again no matter how many promises you make.” He stared at the breaking waves. “I’m afraid I’ll break next time, Jethro. I’m sure I will.” 

“Take my hand.” Gibbs reached across the space between them.

Tony did as requested and felt somehow comforted when the other man’s fingers twined with his own.

“I didn’t like how I felt when Nasir shot at you today,” Gibbs admitted. “It was more than just worry over losing an agent. The minute I heard the shot it was like someone reached inside and pulled my guts right out and my heart along with ‘em.” Gibbs shook his head. “I’m afraid too, Tony. Afraid I won’t be able to give you all the things you want from me, afraid of loving you too much, afraid of losing you like I lost them.”

“You won’t lose me. Haven’t you figured that out after six years?”

“And I came back for you, Tony. I came back when I could have, maybe even should have, stayed away. You won’t lose me.”

Tony watched the waves roll toward the shore. “Maybe we need to try being unafraid together for a while. See what that’s like.”

“Think I’d like that.” Gibbs grazed his thumb across Tony’s knuckles.

They sat together in silence for a while and Tony felt tension he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding slowly drain away with each gentle swell that moved beneath him.

“Jethro?”

Gibbs looked at him.

“I think I’m ready now.”

The other man nodded. “When I say ‘go’, aim for the spot right between those two palm trees. That’s where it’s breaking best. If you go under, and you will, look for Kai. He’ll be there.” He turned his board to watch the incoming swells.

Tony took a deep breath and waited.

“Go.”

His head snapped up and his arms went into motion immediately, pushing himself ahead of the swell he could feel propelling him forward. He was nearing the break before he knew it, the water surging up beneath him, trying to leave him behind. With everything he had, Tony dug in and felt himself poised on the just-shattering crest. Gripping the edges of the board he pushed himself up, landing just as Gibbs had taught him. For one brilliant, shining moment, he rode the edge of the wave, borne aloft like Poseidon on his chariot.

And then he was falling.

Arms flailing, he went down the face of the break and plunged into the churning sea. He tried to remember everything Gibbs and Kai had said about staying down and waiting for the wave to roll over him but in his panic he immediately fought for the surface and was nearly smacked in the head by his board. The collapsing wave pounded him, rolling him toward the reef and he didn’t have enough air any more. Fighting for the surface again, he was startled by a strong arm helping him up and onto another surfboard.

“Relax, Tony. I got you.”

Still reeling from the high and low of the experience, Tony was startled to discover that he could now touch the bottom and that the reef was behind him. Kai had managed to wrangle his board as well and gave him a moment to transfer over and cough out the water he’d swallowed.

“Just paddle the rest of the way in. I’m right behind you.”

Tony looked over his shoulder and saw that Gibbs had found his ride, dropping in and making it look like the easiest thing in the world. Grudgingly, he headed for shore.

“Now that’s a proper Hawaiian welcome.” Kai said as Tony collapsed onto his knees on the beach. “Pretty good for your first ride. Most people never even get up.”

“I wiped out.” Tony saw Gibbs approaching.

“With style too,” Kai laughed. “But you got up.” His big hand clapped him on the back as he grinned.

He _had_ gotten up. And for one moment it had been absolutely glorious. For one moment he had understood all those things Gibbs had said to him that morning about balance and focus and letting go. It had been beautiful.

“Pretty nice wipe out. But you were looking good before that.” Gibbs observed as he came up and made no pretense of checking Tony over for injuries.

Tony looked up at the two men with a smile filled with grim determination “Can I go again?”

* * *

 

“Am I supposed to hurt this bad _before_ I go to bed?” Tony rolled shoulders which were already stiffening up.

Gibbs looked at him speculatively. “Might be able to help with that.”

“Anything that will let me move tomorrow without feeling like I got run over by a bus.” He watched as Gibbs got up and went into the bathroom, emerging with a glass bottle filled with light brown liquid.

“Something Kai makes up. Gave me some for my knee last night.” He motioned Tony to the couch.

“What’s in it?” Tony looked at the bottle suspiciously.

“I don’t ask,” Gibbs laughed. “You’ll wanna take off your shirt for this. It stains.”

“You’re just trying to get me out of my clothes,” Tony chided. In fact, he felt as nervous as he had the first time Jethro had touched him in a way that was decidedly more than friendly

“I don’t seem to remember that being a problem for you.” Gibbs waited as Tony tossed his shirt onto one of the armchairs. He pumped some of the liquid into his palms and rubbed them together, placing his hands on Tony’s shoulders and using light pressure. The younger man’s skin sliding beneath his hands caused an avalanche of memory and he fought not to react.

“Mmm…feels good,” Tony purred as Gibbs’ thumbs worked on either side of his spine along his neck. “Doesn’t smell too bad either.” Whatever Gibbs was using had a light mint aroma without being mediciny.

Jethro worked at the tension in Tony’s shoulders then moved down to his upper arms. His movements were long and fluid and he could feel Tony relaxing more with each sweep of his palms. Eventually his fingers wandered over the younger man’s shoulder blades, slipped beneath his arms, and fanned out along his flanks. “This okay,” he asked when he felt Tony shudder.

“Mmmhmm.” Tony didn’t have words to say how okay it was. His breathing picked up and he leaned back into Jethro. “Exactly how much do you remember? About before?” Whether or not he was ready to hear the answers, at least it was a distraction from what his body was telling him needed to happen next.

“Fragments, flashes. It’s like having just enough of a puzzle to tell what the picture is but still missing important pieces,” he tried to explain. He kept his fingers working lightly against Tony’s ribs which he knew from experience would be sore from the workout he’d gotten that afternoon. “Most of the time I remember feelings more than actual events.”

“But you remembered the sliver? That night in the basement.” He referred to the incident on the plane and felt heat climb up his throat at the memory.

“That one I remember.” He leaned forward and spoke against the rim of Tony’s ear. “That one I remember all of.”

Tony stiffened at the feel of Jethro’s lips against the spot that drove him absolutely wild. “That was the first night I…”

“I know.” His hands came around and flattened over Tony’s stomach, pulling him into an embrace.

“Never thought you’d ever touch me like this again,” Tony breathed. “Do you have any idea how much I wanted to…ever since you came back. The minute you walked in that door, Jethro, putting my hands on you was all I could think about.”  

“I know,” Gibbs whispered.

He laid his hands over the top of Jethro’s. “I’m not sure I know how to go back. I don’t think I can just pick up where we left off four months ago.”

“Not asking for that. I’m not asking for anything.” He held Tony tight against his chest now. “Still trying to figure everything out myself. Don’t think I wasn’t more than a little shocked to remember being with you like that. To remember wanting you.” He wanted Tony just as badly now. His entire body pulsed with it. He was like an alcoholic who’d gotten his first taste of liquor in four months and needed the whole bottle, but was scared to death to pour a drink.

Tony shifted in Jethro’s embrace and sat up, turning to face him. “I don’t know where to start over.” He could see the arousal coloring the other man’s face, darkening his eyes. It mirrored his own and he cursed his own uncertainty.

Reaching for Tony’s wrist, Jethro wrapped his fingers around it lightly as he had in the hold of the plane, as he had on the night which had begun so many things. His thumb stroked the center of the younger man’s palm and he heard Tony’s breath catch as he lifted it to his lips and pressed his mouth reverently against warm skin. “We can start wherever you want, Tony. Whenever you want.” He kissed the pads of each one of the younger man’s fingertips in turn and returned to center, looking up to find Tony watching him intently, lips slightly parted.

Trembling at each curl of warm breath against his flesh, Tony lifted his other hand and pulled at the edge of Jethro’s t-shirt, slipping his fingers beneath the soft fabric. The other man’s skin was magnetic, pulling at his fingertips as they slid through the soft down on his belly, climbed up to tangle in the fuller hair of his chest.

“You wanna do this here?” Jethro asked, not breaking eye contact. Something in Tony’s fleeting, careful touches said this wasn’t about sex.

He shook his head. “Just wanna…just need your hands on me tonight,” Tony confessed. He couldn’t explain the feeling any better than that.

Gibbs pulled away slowly and stood, taking Tony along. “Think I can do that.” He was achingly hard and the tenting of Tony’s boxers told a similar story but it didn’t have to be about that. Not tonight. He let the other man lead the way to the darkened bedroom. “On or off?” He plucked at his t-shirt.

“Off,” Tony breathed, “definitely off.” He wasn’t sure how far he was prepared to take this but he had always been a tactile creature, always learning the world through his hands, and he wanted nothing between his skin and Jethro’s own tonight.

Tony paused with his fingers in the waistband of his boxers. “This feels weird. Like it’s the first time you’re seeing me naked, except it’s not.” He felt inexplicably self-conscious, though he had never been ashamed of his body.

“Think about how I feel,” Jerthro laughed, lightening the awkwardness of the moment slightly.

Pulling the light blankets off the bed, Tony sat down on the sheet and shifted toward the wall, making room for Gibbs on a bed that was really too small to accommodate both of them without some serious cuddling.

Jethro lined his body up with Tony’s, facing him on his side, but kept a few inches of distance between them. Slowly, he reached out and traced the curve of the younger man’s jaw with his thumb, letting his fingertips trail lightly over his cheekbones and over the lobe of his ear as they glided down the back of his neck. “This okay?” He asked, tracing the long arc of Tony’s back in slow, gentle sweeps.

“More than okay.” Tony shifted closer, feeling the heat of Jethro’s body against the entire length of his own, tasting his breath on his lips. He reached for those lips tentatively, fleetingly, remembering the first moment they had found his in the dark of Gibbs’ basement.

Opening to Tony’s kisses but letting the other man retain control, Jethro put more weight behind his touches, increasing the pressure on hard muscle. When the younger man deepened the kiss and snaked a hand over his hip, pulling him close, he began to wonder if this was such a good idea. His body remembered, even if his brain was Swiss cheese, and there was no tamping down his desire even if he did put it on a very short leash. “Tell me if you want me to stop,” Jethro murmured against lips that seemed to have no intent on leaving his.

“Don’t stop. Don’t you ever stop touching me, Jethro. Never again.” Tony’s plea was too close to a moan for his own liking but Jethro’s fingers were kneading his thighs and his bottom in ways that told him the other man remembered far more than he was letting on, and he was too lost in the miracle of what was happening between them right now to care.

He could feel Tony, hard and leaking against his belly, hard and rolling his hips now, giving little unconscious thrusts with each sweep of hands over his skin. Fingers curled into his hair and with every tiny noise and sigh the younger man made against his mouth, Jethro felt his own control slipping that much more.

“Turn over.” He nipped at Tony’s bottom lip and loosened his hold just a little.

“Jethro, I…”

“Just trust me.” Jethro kissed the younger man gently and nosed at his cheek.

Tony turned onto his side, spooning into Jethro’s body now, feeling the thick shaft of his cock against his bottom. One of the other man’s arms reached up over his shoulder and clasped his hand while the other slowly roamed the length of his body from calf to clavicle. Soft lips moved against the back of his neck, the curve of his shoulder, the nub of his earlobe, never demanding, never taking. His body was on fire from the tips of his hair right down to his toes, sensitized, electrified by the never-ceasing sweep of loving hands across his flesh.

Jethro’s caresses became more focused as Tony’s breathing became shallow and the younger man moved restlessly against him, muscles bunching and twitching at every touch now. He traced circles across Tony’s belly, pressed into the crease of his hip, worried and rubbed one flat nipple with the pad of his thumb. With a hand beneath Tony’s knee, he urged him to open to him, draping one long leg over his own and caressing the inside of his thighs.

Gasping and clutching at the hand between his legs, Tony drew it up slowly and placed it on his twitching cock. “Please, Jethro…just…please.” He didn’t care that he sounded desperate. He’d been dying for the other man to touch him like this for months and he didn’t want to be afraid of it anymore.  

“Never have to ask me, Tony. Never again.” Jethro’s voice was thick against the curve of Tony’s ear as he fisted his cock and began to stroke it’s length in slow pulls, listening to the hitch in the younger man’s breathing that told him he’d found the right pace. Tony was alive in his arms, thrusting and rolling his hips, moving his free hand restlessly across the sheets or clutching at his hip, all while his gasps and sweet, throaty moans became more needy and close.,

The catch of Jethro’s thumb beneath the rim of his head sent a shudder through Tony’s body with each stroke. Whatever else he’d lost, Gibbs definitely remembered just how he liked to be jerked off and he was quickly driving Tony toward an almost certainly explosive release. He could feel the insistent pressure building between his hips, the warmth that tugged at his spine. Tony reached for the edge, fingers flexing against Jethro’s thigh as the heat in his belly burst and shattered, spilling out of him in sharp waves that shook him from head to toe.

Gibbs didn’t need a warning to know Tony was about to come. He kept his strokes even when the younger man’s breathing hitched and stuttered, finally emerging as a broken gasp as warmth burst against his fingers in heavy spurts. He kept stroking while the man in his arms trembled and moaned through his orgasm, only stopping to wipe his hand on the sheets when Tony had fully quieted. “Okay?” he whispered against sweat-dampened skin.

“Mmm...”Tony sighed heavily. “Much better than okay.”

“Still here.” Gibbs kissed the spot just behind his ear.

“You are,” Tony agreed, rolling his hips lazily against Jethro’s persistent erection. “Maybe I can do something about that.”

“’M fine.” He nosed into Tony’s hair and tried to think about something other than the fact that he was hard as a rock with aching balls. He didn’t want this to be about what he needed.

“Don’t argue with me, Jethro.” Tony rolled over and smiled dreamily at him. His hand began to wander the older man’s backside.

They both jumped as a cell phone buzzed to life on the nightstand beside the bed. Gibbs reached for it and checked the caller ID. “Cabbot.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and answered.

“Yeah, Gibbs.”

Tony’s hand didn’t still as he waited to hear whatever Jethro was getting from Pearl.

“No, we’ll be right in. Hold them off until we get down there.” He snapped the phone shut.

“Talk about your bad timing.” Tony kissed him gently and pushed himself up. He was going to need to wash off before they went anywhere.

“They ran all the orders and deliveries against each other. Found one address that didn’t fit. Cabbot’s putting a team together to check it out right now. They’ll wait for our lead.” Jethro swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood, a movement made far more awkward by his stiffly jutting erection.

“What are you gonna do about that?” Tony grinned while he watched Gibbs’ bare bottom head out of the room.

“ _Really_ cold shower.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This final chapter has been completely reworked from the original. There are no major plot changes but I really think you will like it so much more! I really rushed the original last chapter to meet my posting deadline for the RB challenge so it didn't get the usual editing and fleshing out I usually do in my 100+ read throughs before posting. I have added over 2K words of beautiful smutty feels and I'm much happier with it now. Hope you enjoy!!

 

“Security cameras on the roof, Boss.” Tony pointed above one of three doors leading into the warehouse their evidence had brought them to.

“Got it.” Gibbs’ voice came to him through his ear piece. This time they were going in prepared with vests and tech.

From his cover behind a stand of palms, Tony waited for Cabbot to signal that the other agents were in place. Thermal images and radio surveillance indicated three men inside the building but there was a lot of open ground surrounding it and recon was proving difficult. They weren’t completely blind but they had no way to know if the men inside were armed or prepared.

“Alpha is go.” Cabbot’s voice filled Tony’s ear.

“Beta is go,” he confirmed, waving to Gibbs who was about 50 yards away nearer the opposite corner of the warehouse.

“Go.” Gibbs’ directed, sending the teams in motion.

Tony moved with the shadows. He couldn’t tell the exact range of the surveillance camera but he knew that the tech crew in a nearby van would find its frequency and disable it only at the last moment so as not to arouse suspicion. He tried to stay wide.

“Alpha is at the northwest door.” Cabbot’s voice was more hushed this time.

“Beta at the south.” He pitched his voice low, watching Gibbs who was covering the most likely escape route with another agent. 

“Cameras are out.” A voice Tony didn’t recognize gave the last signal.

“In three…two…one…go!”

“Federal Agents!” Tony’s voice boomed as the door slammed open against aluminum siding. Cabbot and his team came through the door on the opposite side where the heat signatures indicated the warehouse’s occupants currently were. Scanning the contents of the building he quickly moved to cover on one wall, advancing from crevice to crevice.

“On the ground!” Cabbot and his team had the three men pinned in a corner and it looked as though they had caught them unaware.

The space in the warehouse was largely empty but it was big enough to provide cover for the helicopter that stood almost fully assembled in the middle of the main room. Tony quickly cleared a loft space and what passed for an office and sleeping area while Cabbot’s team cuffed their suspects, two of whom looked familiar from the photos Tony and Gibbs had passed around earlier. He didn’t know who the third man was but it wasn’t Fayed.

“Building is clear, Gibbs.” Tony said into his mike.

“Grounds are clear.” Gibbs said from the doorway, not bothering with his own mike.

They walked over to inspect the helicopter which was painted with one of the logos from Bright Sky Charters. “Got something in here, Boss.”

“Looks like a mount for a rocket launcher.” Gibbs inspected the fittings.

“Two,” Tony pointed out another mount on the other side. “If they’d gotten into the harbor with this they could have done a hell of a lot of damage.”

“Good thing we got here first then, isn’t it.” He was still examining the interior of the craft.

“And Fayed?”

“We’ll see what we get out of the scene. Looks like we got here before they realized Nasir took himself out. Hopefully they didn’t have a chance to clean up.”

Cabbot’s team was securing the suspects for transport when Gibbs and Tony caught up with them. “Got two more teams on their way to process. One for the bird, one for the rest.”

Gibbs nodded. “Let these guys chill in a well-lit room for a while. Separately.”

“I’ve got about five different agencies already calling me to get a crack at them.” Cabbot grinned.

“They were targeting a naval base. That gives us first dibs. Everyone else can have the leftovers when we get through with them tomorrow. Until then they’re on lockdown. In the meantime, let’s get teams on cell phone records and the footage from those cameras. Find out if we can get any fix on Fayed. If they get anything significant call me, otherwise we’ll be back at 1300.”

Tony looked at his watch. It was already 3am. With prep time they’d worked through most of the night but the adrenaline rush had kept him going.

“Leaving us with all the paperwork, eh, Gibbs?” Cabbot chided.

“Hey, we’re just guests. Guests don’t have to do paperwork.” He turned away with a look of mock innocence.

“Don’t feel like any guests I’ve ever had before.” Cabbot laughed. “See you in a few hours.”

* * *

 

Tony woke to the sun in his eyes and a familiar warmth curled around him. He stretched languidly in Jethro’s arms and smiled at the gentle kiss on the curve of his neck.

“Morning.” Gibbs smiled against Tony’s skin.

They’d practically fallen into bed together when they’d gotten home, neither bothering to voice the desire that it be the same bed. “What time is it?” Tony rubbed at his eyes, realizing that his arms didn’t feel nearly as sore as he’d expected after his adventures in the ocean the day before.

“Nine thirty. Have a little while.” He kissed a slow path across Tony’s back.

“Mmm…what were you thinking?” Tony pressed into the other man’s embrace.

Gibbs laughed. “Not that.” His fingers traced a zig-zag line between the freckles on the younger man’s shoulder.  “Was gonna hit the beach. Catch a few sets before we head in.”

“All this time and I never would have thought you’d choose surfing over sex. Boat building maybe, but definitely not surfing.”

“Plenty of time for the other one.” His teeth nipped at Tony’s earlobe playfully. “Don’t know how long we’re here.”

Tony sighed. “I’m in. A few more days and I might give you a run for your money. Or drown trying,” he tossed over his shoulder as he extracted himself from the surprisingly comfortable tangle of their limbs and headed for the bathroom. The way Jethro was watching his bare ass was just a little unnerving and would take some getting used to again.

This time Gibbs loaded up the boards and they drove to another beach where the break wasn’t quite as intense and there were more lifeguards since Kai couldn’t join them. “Just in case,” Gibbs had teased lightly.

After a few sets and more than a few wipeouts, Tony was managing to stay up longer and longer and even Gibbs seemed impressed. When they finally hauled themselves out of the water he was exhausted but refreshed. “Think maybe I could get into this after all,” he mused to Gibbs as they finished loading up the car.

“Gonna put in for a transfer?” Gibbs laughed, pulling out onto the main road.

“Depends,” Tony looked at him speculatively. “You gonna follow me?”

“Anywhere.” Jethro’s gaze was fixed on the cars ahead of them but his answer was quick and firm.

Something warm and alive spread through Tony’s chest and his breath caught in his throat. “You really mean that don’t you?”

“Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

They rode in silence for a few minutes.

“I didn’t come back for half way, Tony.” Jethro looked over at him. “When I got back to DC, I didn’t know how to start with you, how to let you know that you were the real reason I came back and stayed, the only reason I ever needed.” The words seemed to be coming easier now. “We both needed some time just to learn how to be in the same room together again. Hell, I haven’t even thought one move ahead yet, let alone played out how all of this will work. But I don’t love you half way, Tony, that part I’m sure of.” The declaration was strong and impassioned. “So yeah, I’d follow you. I’d follow you anywhere.”

As they pulled into the driveway Tony realized that the man next to him now was not the same man who had left him five months earlier. Despite their involvement and the fact that he had been confident the other man had deep feelings for him, the Jethro Gibbs he knew would never have been bold or open enough for such a confession, would never have invited him in quite as intimately as he had in the last few days. He could find no words to follow-up Jethro’s clearly heart-felt revelation and so he settled for silence as they carefully placed Kai’s boards back up against the house.

They only had an hour and a half before they were due back at Pearl now. Tony ran a hand through hair which was still wet and salt-spiked. He watched as Jethro began to peel off his wetsuit just inside the doorway and strip to the swim shorts he wore underneath. His fingers scrabbled for his own zipper but before he found it, the other man’s hands were pushing his aside, pulling the long closure open and pushing the suit from his shoulders.

Tony rounded on Jethro, crowding him up against the countertop of the small kitchenette. Driving his fingers into damp, silver hair, he found the other man’s mouth and kissed him hard, letting his lips and tongue say all the things he didn’t dare to say out loud, didn’t yet have words for. His hands roamed the acres of warm skin available to him, skimming over slim, carved shoulders, a beautifully arched back, the curve of a firm bottom.

Jethro opened to him, accepting the restless passion of Tony’s kisses while slowly pushing the stubbornly clingy suit down his thighs and onto the floor. Tony kicked it aside and pressed his hips forward, easing up the pressure on his mouth for a moment.

“Need to shower.” He nipped at Jethro’s lips, resting their foreheads together as his hands continued to wander.

“Probably not a bad idea.” It was beginning to look like one of the most immediate consequences of breaking rule 12 was going to be a hell of a lot of frustration and cold showers. Tony’s hands continued taking thorough inventory of his body and he was still throbbing with pent-up need from the night before.

“Used to like showering with you in the mornings.” Tony’s fingers trailed lightly across Jethro’s clavicle and into the hollow of his throat.

_Warm water hitting between his shoulder blades-sound of mingled moans ringing off the tile-taste of Tony’s wet skin against his tongue-damp hair between his fingers-tight heat around his cock._

“I remember.”

Tony felt Jethro’s breathing hitch and the older man shuddered in his arms. “I’m sorry. Didn’t know it would hit you like that.”

“Don’t be.” Jethro shook his head. “Wasn’t a bad memory at all.”

Tony kissed him again, more softly this time, letting the heat of it build and spread. That he could do this again, that his tongue could taste the familiar warmth of Jethro’s mouth, that his hands could touch angles and curves carved indelibly into his memory, still seemed miraculous.

When they were both breathing hard and Jethro’s lips had moved on to travel the cut of his jaw, Tony pulled them away from the counter and toward the rear of the small house, keeping his hands firmly planted on the other man’s hips.

“Where we headed?” Jethro murmured against his cheek.

“Shower.” Tony nipped at the other man’s lower lip with sharp teeth and suddenly found his back pressed to the wall behind him.

Jethro’s fingers fumbled at the tie to Tony’s swim shorts before he pushed them down his thighs. “Think I’d like that.”

* * *

 

Tony’s body pinned him against the cool tile, arms fencing him in, and Jethro wondered where the submissive creature inside of him had come from, the one that seemed to like the cage, the one that moaned and begged and pleaded as the other man’s mouth latched onto his overheated skin and suckled hard, marking him.

The sharp little twist of nipping teeth along his clavicle became the soothing lave of a velvet tongue became the pull of heat around his nipple as Tony worked his way down his body, leaving warm, aching flesh in his wake. A needy gasp and low moan accompanied the coil of his fingers against Tony’s scalp when the younger man dropped to his knees and licked into the seam of his leg. 

Clever fingers reached between his thighs, pressed up behind his balls making his toes curl against the tile and his breath come in strangled little pants. Tony’s lips were everywhere, his hips, the inside of his thighs, the flat of his stomach, everywhere but where he desperately needed them right now. Jethro almost sagged in relief when the younger man’s palm finally wrapped around his shaft and stroked him with a touch that was far too delicate.

“Look at me, Jethro. Open your eyes and watch me.” Tony’s voice was thick and throaty.

Jethro hadn’t even realized that his eyelids had fallen closed in the haze of his desire and as he canted his head down and let them flutter open, the heat in his belly coiled that much tighter. Darkened grey eyes looked up at him, the focus of a face filled with heavy lust and unabashed adoration. Kiss-swollen lips parted and he didn’t breathe as Tony took his cock and teased the tip of it with feather-light kisses, running the sensitive rim along the inside of his lip just deep enough that he felt the rough edges of the younger man’s teeth. His entire body convulsed with the pleasure-pain of it and his muttered curses echoed off the walls around them.

“So beautiful, Tony,” he murmured, thumb sliding along the younger man’s jaw, “so beautiful…how could I ever…” And suddenly there were no more words because Tony was taking him deep, opening his throat and swallowing him before retreating and advancing again.

The muscles in Jethro’s thighs twitched and bunched with each long stroke and he barely recognized the tight keening sounds that passed his lips when Tony’s tongue flattened against the underside of his shaft and undulated with each pass of his lips. His blood sang in his ears and throbbed in his veins, making his whole body feel like it was about to fly apart. A soft palm tightened around his cock and began to stroke firm and fast, twisting just a little with each caress. He tried to hold back, to rein in his own need but Jethro was so lost in the heat of it all that he began to thrust lightly into Tony’s mouth, broken pulses that weren’t half of what he really wanted.

“Jesus, _fuck…_ Tony…so good _…so good,_ your mouth on me…don’t…gonna come like this… can’t… _fuck_ , Tony…” The words dissolved from his tongue as the heat climbing his spine finally shattered, spreading crystalline and sharp into his shoulders and his hips in tight, hard beats that had his fingers scrabbling against the tile, clutching at Tony’s shoulders. The younger man took him deep again then and he felt the strong contraction of smooth muscle around his cock as Tony drank down everything he could give, suckling gently for more.

He was still quaking with the aftershocks of release when Tony climbed up his body and pressed cum-slick lips to his, feeding him the flavor off of his tongue.

“Missed the taste of you so much, Jetho. Missed you like…like air some days.” Tony’s body was still tense with his own need and he pressed close to Jethro, pumping his cock into the crease of the other man’s hip as he spoke against his mouth in breathless, ragged bursts. “So hot when you come for me…when you _beg,_ Jethro.  Almost came when you said my name like that…so close…so close and I…”

Tony’s mouth covered his, tongue thrusting between his lips in a reckless counterpoint to the pulse of his hips as he reached the brink. Sharp teeth bit his bottom lip, hard enough to bruise but not wound, and Jethro felt the spill of Tony’s cum against his skin as the younger man shook and trembled in the circle of his arms.

* * *

 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tony scolded, quietly.

“Like what?” Gibbs asked, keeping his eyes trained on the screen in front of them.

“You know like what. Like I just sucked your cock in the shower.” He felt a faint heat in his cheeks and looked around to see if anyone was standing close. Thankfully, with three suspected terrorists in custody, it was a busy day.

“I’m standin’ behind you, DiNozzo.”

“I can see you in the reflection.” He could, and there were things written more plainly on Jethro’s face than lust, things which set up a warm ache right behind his ribs. “Think about something else. People will notice.”

“What if I don’t care if they notice?”

“What if..? Come on, Gibbs. Of course you care.” Tony tried to focus on the files McGee was sending to them.

“Not sure I do anymore.”

Tony turned to him, mouth open, nearly stunned right out of his chair. “You’re not serious.”

“Think I might be.” He made it sound casual. “Come on, Cabbot’s waiting.”

Tony scrambled after him. “We’re not done talking about this, you know.”

“I know,” he sighed, coming to a stop in front of the door to interrogation. Thankfully the corridor was abandoned. “That was one hell of a blow job though.” He leaned in and quickly kissed Tony’s lips, disappearing through the door before the younger man could voice his objection.

* * *

 

Their day at NCIS Pearl was a productive one. The warehouse had produced some leads on Fayed which were being passed on to other foreign offices and at the very least, they seemed to have neutralized any immediate threat. Tony spent the day tracking the origins of the ordinance that had been found with the helicopter and doing print elimination with Spencer. By the end of the day, the two were laughing and joking as though they were good friends, or, at the very least, familiar co-workers. There were still things to shake out, but as they left for the night, most of the follow-up had been doled out to other agents or agencies and they would be starting fresh in the morning. Cabbot assured them there were still plenty of half-leads to work through as well as security sweeps of various ports on the island which would take up their time.

Tony couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment things had begun to build again between he and Jethro during the day, though it might have been the insanely impetuous kiss just before Gibbs handed their suspects their asses in interrogation. Perhaps it was his own heightened awareness but it seemed the other man stood closer, lingered longer, touched more often than normal, seemingly making good on his musings from the beginning of their day.

Whatever had started it, the heat between them was at a slow boil for the entire drive back to the house. The muscles in Gibbs’ thigh quivered beneath the touch of his hand and he watched Jethro’s reaction as his fingers traced a light pattern, moving ever higher. The tension in his jaw told Tony everything he needed to know.

They had just pulled onto the two lane around the North Shore when the other man shifted, spreading his legs wider as he covered Tony’s hand with his own and placed it between his thighs.

“No surfing tonight?” The question was moot as it was already well after dark.

“No surfing.” Jethro tensed as Tony gently lowered his zipper and began lightly stroking his erection through his boxers. “Careful,” he warned, trying to concentrate on the road.

“How long till we’re back?” Jethro’s head had slipped from the hole in the fabric and he teased the leaking slit of it with one finger.

“Too damn long,” he growled in reply, tightening his grip on the wheel.

“We could stop,” Tony proposed casually. “Lots of isolated spots out here.”

“Want you in a bed tonight.” Jethro’s voice was thick with need. “Not gonna make love to you for the first time in a car or by the side of the road somewhere.”

“ _Technically_ it’s not our first time,” Tony corrected, though he liked the idea of a bed and his chest throbbed a little at the places Gibbs’ head was going.

“Yes it is. For me it is.” Jethro glanced over at him. “I’m not saying everything that happened before doesn’t count, Tony, that it doesn’t matter. But I’m starting over with you. With you and no one else, so for me, this is the first time.”

Tony’s hand had stilled completely and without a word he carefully tucked Jethro back into his pants and laid his hand on his thigh once more. “Then it’s a first for me too,” he agreed.

It was only another five minutes back to the house but it felt like an eternity. Thankfully it was late and the main house was already dark.

Jethro was on Tony before they were even in the door, wrapping around him and mouthing at his neck while he fumbled with the keys. They didn’t bother with lights. As soon as the door was closed and locked, they began shedding clothing, stumbling their way in an awkward dance toward the bedroom. Tony paused just at the threshold.

“I need just a minute,” he said regretfully. He didn’t want to stop but there were practicalities to be dealt with.

Gibbs nodded.

He grabbed his go-bag and disappeared into the bathroom. When he returned a few minutes later he found Jethro naked and waiting for him on the bed, propped up on an elbow with one knee raised and looking at him with hungry eyes.

“Hey,” Tony said lamely, coming to stand beside the bed. He trailed his fingers through Jethro’s hair and down his cheek.

“Hey.” Jethro caught his fingers and kissed their tips lightly, pulling one into his mouth and sucking gently while his tongue worked over the pad. He watched Tony’s cock lengthen against his thigh.

Tony set a small tube on the nightstand. Rather than crawling in beside Jethro, he pushed his shoulders back so that they were flat on the mattress and then straddled his hips. Curling forward, he stretched out and clasped both of Jethro’s hands, moving them above the other man’s head as he leaned down to capture his mouth. Teasing Jethro’s lips apart with little twisting bites, he plunged his tongue deep inside, pulsing slowly. He could feel the other man’s cock against his bottom and he moved so that it grazed back and forth over his hole, stopping when Jethro began to moan into his mouth and push against his hands.

The feel of Tony’s tongue in his mouth was dizzying and if the younger man didn’t stop teasing his cock things were going to be over before they began. Jethro freed one of his hands and grabbed for the tube beside him, managing to get it open with one hand. “What do you need?” He managed to get the words out against the younger man’s lips.

“Just you. Just you inside me.” His mouth moved to the hollow of Jethro’s throat and his tongue traced a tendon back up.

“You sure?” He quickly slicked up his cock one-handed.

“Hurry up with that or I’m gonna go without it.” Tony sank his teeth into Jethro’s earlobe. “You think you remember how everything works?” He asked as he felt the other man’s erection nudging at his hole.

“Memory’s a little fuzzy on the details but I think I remember the important parts.” He held the shaft of his cock as Tony slowly pressed back, easing himself through the opening until just his head was inside.

Tony gasped and grunted at the tight stretch and burn. After four months, his body was no longer used to this but he knew the discomfort would soon be a memory. Rocking back and forth, he slowly worked himself down Jethro’s cock, letting his body adjust to the invasion. When Gibbs was fully seated inside him, Tony leaned forward so that their bodies moved together.

Raising his knees. Jethro began to thrust lightly into the tight heat of Tony’s body. Images flashed in his mind, sense-memory coupled with emotion which intensified the ache in his chest. Arms around Tony’s back, he rolled them so that he could take control.

“You always were such a top,” Tony smiled up at Jethro as he began to move again. “Well, except that one time.”

“Don’t remember that.” He found his rhythm and plunged deep into Tony’s body in long, fluid strokes.

“Mmm…you liked it. Maybe a little too much,” Tony added breathlessly. His fingers twisted in the sheets as his body began to ascend the steep spiral of arousal.

“Maybe you’ll have to…convince me later.” He gasped at the slap of his balls against Tony’s ass.

“Later?” Tony writhed on the bed, meeting the thrust of Jethro’s hips.

“Later,” Gibbs growled. He was too gone to form more words. He picked up the pace, pressing Tony’s knees back toward his shoulders and taking aim at his sweet spot.

“Fuck! Jethro…” He reached up and fisted his hands in the hair on the other man’s chest. He began to pull frantically at his own cock with one hand, feeling the tantalizing pressure behind his balls suddenly build out of control.

Tony began to moan with each breath, tossing his head on the mattress, and Jethro shifted his weight forward, opening his mouth against Tony’s throat as his rhythm began to falter. “Gonna come,” he panted in warning. He needed Tony to get there with him and he needed it soon.

Even through the haze of his own need Tony could hear the desperation in Jethro’s words. He drove his fingers into the other man’s hair and raised his knees against his flanks, getting just the angle he needed. “Now,” Tony cried breathlessly, “oh _fuck,_ Jethro…right now.”

Jethro felt Tony’s release against his stomach, felt the tight heat around him clutch and try to pull him deeper. With a last volley of broken thrusts he came hard, teeth sinking into Tony’s shoulder as his body shook and trembled with the force of it, spilling deep inside his lover, his partner, his everything.

Tony ran his hands over the sweat-dampened skin of Jethro’s back, his body still quaking with the sweet reverberations of their lovemaking. Fingers carding gently through the soft, silver strands of the older man’s hair, he pressed his lips reverently to his forehead, sighing at the heaviness that had bled into every limb.

“Hell of a first time, Jethro.”

“It really was.” He turned his face up and found the other man’s lips.

Tony kissed Jethro long and deep, somehow putting a seal on what had just happened between them, on the tacit agreement they had now made with each other. “Wow.” He smiled against the other man's lips as they gently broke apart. “Only three days on this island. Maybe there’s something in the water. Let’s never go back to DC.” He nuzzled into Jethro’s still-overly warm skin.

Gibbs gently withdrew from the warmth of Tony’s body and shifted to a more comfortable position. “Weren’t you the one going on about abandoning the team? Dragging me back from the far corners of the earth?” Jethro chided gently.

“You’re right,” he sighed. “We can always bring them here. Even McGee could get laid on this island.”

“Nice try.” Jethro swatted his bottom playfully.  He was absolutely exhausted and could feel his eyelids getting heavy. He pulled Tony tight against him and began to drift.

“Did you mean what you said earlier?” Tony asked quietly after awhile.

“Yes.” Jethro answered unequivocally.

“Don’t you want to ask me which part?”

“Meant everything I said to you today. But if you want to talk about something specific...”

“The part where you said you didn’t care if people found out about…about this.” He gestured between their naked bodies.

“I don’t. Not anymore. Why, do you?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just always thought you would so I never even worried about it.”

Jethro pushed himself up on an elbow and looked at Tony in the dark, idly tracing little patterns through the hair on his chest. “Think we went about this the wrong way the first time.”

“How do you figure? You can’t even remember most of it.”

“I remember enough,” Jethro argued. “I remember that we tried to make this work around the job, that we spent too much time trying to figure out how to fit ourselves between the lines.” He kissed Tony gently. “Think I’d like to try it the other way around for a while. Try to make things work around you and me. What do you think?”

Tony tried to remember to breathe. “I think I could do that.” It was close to a whisper.

“Okay.” Jethro nuzzled into the hollow of his throat and then pulled him into his chest.

“Okay,” Tony murmured, wondering exactly what he had just agreed to, but liking the idea of it.

The silence closed in on them again and rather than quieting, Tony’s brain recovered from its post-coital stupor and began to turn things over.

“So this sleeping together thing. You know, we didn’t used to do that. I’m not complaining, it’s just weird. Not bad weird, just…weird. For you.” Tony fumbled. They’d fallen asleep in the same bed more than a few times but Gibbs had always eventually moved to the couch. “For me too, actually.” His eyebrows furrowed. “And are we a couple now? Do we get pet names? Are there more rules?” Suddenly his mind was going a million miles a minute.

“Shh…we’ll figure it out,” Jethro said sleepily, lips teasing just behind Tony’s ear.

“But what about Tim and Ziva and Abby and, oh God, _Ducky?_ ” There were a million realities to be faced when they returned home and Tony’s head knew them all.

“They’ll be fine. We’ll figure it out.” Jethro repeated.

“But the Director, and…”

“We’ll figure it out, Tony.” Jethro said more vehemently this time, squeezing the younger man’s hip. “I don’t have the answers right now, but I love you and we’ll figure it out.”

Tony blinked as it sank in and he felt his body relax. “You love me,” he breathed.

“I do.” Jethro smiled, just on the edge of sleep.

“And we’ll figure it out,” Tony said quietly, almost to himself. This time there was no response from Jethro but the sound of deep, even breathing and the little ‘poof’ sound. “Because you love me.” He smiled as he said the words and with a heart lighter than it had ever been, he fell asleep in his lover’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I met a man and he took me on a walk through the world of my dreams...
> 
> This fic is one of the hardest I have ever written. I took on this particular prompt because I took a trip to LA and Hawaii during the time I was writing it. I hope that you can feel all of those details about Hawaii coming through. As I wrote, I walked along those beaches again and felt the pull of the ocean against my body. I felt the coarse sand between my toes and I pictured the surfers I had seen riding white-capped waves. Hawaii made this story easy.  
> LA made it hard.   
> I spent some time at Valencia Studios on this trip and, while I won't tell you what I found there, I will tell you that it had a significant impact on me and made it much harder to let go of reality and write these characters. You should always be careful what you wish for because you might actually get it. And when you do, you might wish that you'd never wished. I don't know that I would give it all back but the thought has crossed my mind a time or two. 
> 
> I met a man and he took me on a walk through the world of my dreams...
> 
> Thank you for reading,  
> Kat


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